Worldcoin, Now Valued at $1B, Has Grand Plans to Get You to Gaze Into the Orb
Summary
Depending on whom you ask, Worldcoin’s plan might sound futuristic and cool, a little silly, or like a dystopian nightmare ripped from science fiction. Worldcoin announced Thursday it raised $25 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group (the parent company of CoinDesk) and angel investors including crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. Though privacy experts have expressed concern over this plan, Alex Blania, one of the co-founders of Worldcoin, believes that the Orb’s design is privacy-preserving. Blania told CoinDesk that Worldcoin has partnered with a “very big international manufacturer” with a plant in Germany, which will pump out about 50,000 Orbs per year. According to Worldcoin, 130,000 people around the world have already gazed into the Orb in a crypto twist on universal basic income (UBI).