Speaker 1: If I asked you a year ago to explain what
Speaker 1: chat GPT is all about, you might have given a
Speaker 1: blank stare not anymore, though, in a very short time,
Speaker 1: we've become all too familiar with the ins and outs
Speaker 1: of AI and large language models. The same thing might
Speaker 1: be happening now with another new tech venture. It's called
Speaker 1: world Coin.
Speaker 2: World Coin a new form of digital money that has
Speaker 2: just been launched. The project is called world Coin. It
Speaker 2: aims to provide a unique world ID to humans.
Speaker 1: It's the passion project of Sam Altman. He's the CEO
Speaker 1: of open Ai, the company that gave us chat GPT.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard of worldcoin yet, well it's inventors
Speaker 1: and backers hope it too will soon become a household name.
Speaker 1: World Coin is sort of a cryptocurrency, but not only that.
Speaker 1: It ultimately aims to revolutionize the way we make sick
Speaker 1: cure financial transactions using a unique identifier, our eyeballs. And
Speaker 1: if that sounds confusing, never fear. Bloomberg's Hannah Miller, who
Speaker 1: covers crypto and startups, is here to help us out.
Speaker 1: She explains why world coin is having a tough time
Speaker 1: gaining acceptance in some places and why some governments won't
Speaker 1: it regulated.
Speaker 2: There's also this idea, well, why do we need something
Speaker 2: that uses crypto and blockchain to keep track of identity?
Speaker 2: You know, we already have passport systems, we already have
Speaker 2: national ID systems. So I do think there is this
Speaker 2: question of why do we need to add this in
Speaker 2: why Crypto, Why Blockchain?
Speaker 1: I'm West Kosova today on the Big Take Why world
Speaker 1: Coin is eyeing our eyes? Hey Hannah, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 1: I am okay. I've been really excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you about this because world Coin is just such a
Speaker 1: strange thing. We keep hearing about it, and to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I still don't quite understand what it is.
Speaker 2: This is a cryptocurrency project that was started with this
Speaker 2: idea of proof of personhood. So with the rise of
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence, it's becoming harder to tell who's a human
Speaker 2: on the Internet and who's a bot. You know, we've
Speaker 2: already seen things like chat GPT. This is just such
Speaker 2: a hot area in tech. So basically, it has a
Speaker 2: system where you would prove your identity by getting your
Speaker 2: eyeball scanned by this little device called an orb. You
Speaker 2: basically look into it. It scans your eye and you
Speaker 2: have a unique digital identity, and that's supposed to show
Speaker 2: that you're a real person.
Speaker 1: And so from then on, whenever you want to use
Speaker 1: world coin, you have to scan your eyeball.
Speaker 2: You don't. It's actually a one time thing. So you
Speaker 2: do the orb once and you get this ID on
Speaker 2: your phone. It's called a world ID, and basically that's
Speaker 2: supposed to eventually give you access to services online. It's
Speaker 2: a security method. They're still kind of figuring out what
Speaker 2: they're going to do with this identity, and they're making
Speaker 2: partnerships with different security firms that are out there to
Speaker 2: kind of figure out how this could help the internet
Speaker 2: and Internet users determine who's human and who's not. It's
Speaker 2: all about access, and it's all about showing that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're a person and not a bot.
Speaker 1: And why are they doing this? Why did they decide
Speaker 1: to embark on this adventure.
Speaker 2: From the beginning, there's been this focus on universal basic income,
Speaker 2: this idea that everyone's entitled to a stipend basically and
Speaker 2: that will help them meet costs of living. And this
Speaker 2: has been a passion problem of Sam Altman, who's the
Speaker 2: CEO of the AI company OpenAI, which developed chat GPT.
Speaker 2: He's really passionate about this area. And there was this
Speaker 2: idea that, Okay, if you have a unique digital identity,
Speaker 2: that can make it easier for governments to distribute universal
Speaker 2: basic income payments because you have one identity per person
Speaker 2: that can cut down on fraud. And the way you
Speaker 2: do it is through this eyeball scan. So that's sort
Speaker 2: of how it got started. I think the project is
Speaker 2: still figuring out where it's going to go and the
Speaker 2: use cases for this ID, and right now it's in
Speaker 2: the process of gaining new users scanning people's eyeballs to
Speaker 2: get them a world ID.
Speaker 1: So let's talk for a minute about the scanning the
Speaker 1: eyeball thing in this ORB. Which does it? How does
Speaker 1: it work? Like, where do you go get your eyeball scanned?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I actually had an ORB demonstration in person.
Speaker 2: I was at the Tools for Humanity office in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: Tools for Humanity is the star that developed world coin
Speaker 2: and they're based in San Francisco and Berlin. So I
Speaker 2: got to their SF office and they were like, Hey,
Speaker 2: would you like your eyeball scanned? And I declined. I
Speaker 2: was a little nervous to be honest, and so they
Speaker 2: did it with another person in front of me, and
Speaker 2: it's really really quick. I don't know if you use
Speaker 2: the clear service at the airport where you know, you
Speaker 2: look into a camera and they determine your identity by
Speaker 2: scanning your eyes, I would say it's very similar to that.
Speaker 2: I will say it did not work the first time
Speaker 2: they tried it, but then once it got going, you know,
Speaker 2: they gave the world idea to the person and it
Speaker 2: was fine. But with orbs, you can find them in
Speaker 2: public places all over the world, and they're actually trying
Speaker 2: to roll out more orbs, so they have them in
Speaker 2: places like train stations or pop up stores where people
Speaker 2: can stop in and get their eyeball scanned. When I
Speaker 2: spoke to the Tools for Humanity executives, you know, they're
Speaker 2: really saying that they're really interested in markets in Asia.
Speaker 2: That's a hot area for them, and and there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of sign ups in Africa and Kenya specifically.
Speaker 1: And do you have to pay to heav your eyeball
Speaker 1: scan and get this code.
Speaker 2: No, that's the thing is that actually they pay you.
Speaker 2: So they give you about twenty five world tokens, which
Speaker 2: is the cryptocurrency associated with this project, the twenty five
Speaker 2: tokens that you get, it's equivalent to less than fifty dollars.
Speaker 2: Right now, a world token is trading for a little
Speaker 2: bit over a dollar, and there's been a lot of
Speaker 2: controversy around this idea that you're being paid to give
Speaker 2: up your biometric data.
Speaker 1: In theory, at least if world coin takes off, all
Speaker 1: these people who are sitting on these tokens, could Wang
Speaker 1: go making a whole lot of money for doing nothing.
Speaker 2: The hope is for a lot of people is that
Speaker 2: the price of these tokens will increase. The world tokens
Speaker 2: haven't been around that long. They were released publicly in July,
Speaker 2: so we have seen that price fluctuate over the past
Speaker 2: month or so. There's still obviously a lot of time
Speaker 2: to see what happens.
Speaker 1: So if the idea behind this is to give people
Speaker 1: an ID that can be trusted and ultimately in this
Speaker 1: kind of utopian idea be used to give people this
Speaker 1: universal basic income, why is it attached to a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: What's the point of making this ID into a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2: I think the original idea of it is that this
Speaker 2: would be the easiest way to distribute universal basic income
Speaker 2: to distribute payments. And there's a lot around blockchain technology
Speaker 2: concerning privacy but also transparency, And there's this idea that
Speaker 2: by having a blockchain digital ledger, it'll be easier to
Speaker 2: track payments, make sure that there isn't fraud. See what's happening.
Speaker 2: I will say, though, when I talk to the CEO
Speaker 2: of Tools for Humanity, this guy Alex Bania, he really
Speaker 2: says that they actually don't consider themselves a crypto project,
Speaker 2: even though they use a cryptocurrency that they see themselves
Speaker 2: as in the intersection of AI and crypto, and they
Speaker 2: don't want to put a label on it. And that's
Speaker 2: a trend I've been seeing among startups that even though
Speaker 2: they use cryptocurrency, they don't want to be associated with
Speaker 2: the crypto industry.
Speaker 1: Are any people saying it sort of looks like making
Speaker 1: this into a cryptocurrency is just a way to get
Speaker 1: people to sign up for a thing that they otherwise
Speaker 1: would not really want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean for a lot of the areas that
Speaker 2: WORLDCIN has been doing initial signups in, like these are
Speaker 2: hard hit places. These are people who fifty dollars is
Speaker 2: a lot of money to them. So MIT Technology Review
Speaker 2: did this whole investigation into world coin sign up practices
Speaker 2: and came out and said that this could be seen
Speaker 2: as exploitative. And since then, you know, world Coin is
Speaker 2: continue to come under fire for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: And what does world Coin say about that.
Speaker 2: They've argued that they make clear what they're telling these people,
Speaker 2: that people are willingly doing this, that they have safe
Speaker 2: and secure sign up practices, and that they're only interested
Speaker 2: in expanding. I should say too, that that world Coin
Speaker 2: cryptotoken I mentioned earlier, that's not available in the US
Speaker 2: because there is a lot of regulatory concern around crypto.
Speaker 2: There was this whole debate going on on whether cryptocurrencies
Speaker 2: are securities or not. And when I spoke to Sam
Speaker 2: Altman and Alex Blania about this, they said that because
Speaker 2: of this regulatory uncertainty in the US, they're not bringing
Speaker 2: world Coin here. You are not paid out in tokens
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 1: After the break why some governments are skeptical about world
Speaker 1: coin kind of Once world Coin scans your iris and
Speaker 1: gives you this identifier, what happens to your iris scan?
Speaker 1: Are they collecting these all around the world.
Speaker 2: Their whole pitch is that this IRIS data is deleted,
Speaker 2: it's not put out publicly. But that's not to say
Speaker 2: that there aren't security risks here. There were multiple incidents
Speaker 2: involving world Coin. One was that people were selling their
Speaker 2: world ideas. They were selling them on black markets and
Speaker 2: it was mainly in China. The other thing, too, was
Speaker 2: that operators, these are the people who will sign you
Speaker 2: up with that ORB that they'll find you at the
Speaker 2: train station scan your eyeball. They actually got some of
Speaker 2: their accounts hacked and their credentials were stolen, and even
Speaker 2: some of them lost money. So I brought these things
Speaker 2: up to Alex and Sam, and Alex said they've made
Speaker 2: security changes, that they've increased their security. And one line
Speaker 2: he said really stuck out to me, which was early on,
Speaker 2: this is crypto, there's going to be things like this
Speaker 2: that happen. It is kind of scary to think about
Speaker 2: in the context of biometric data. And the other thing
Speaker 2: is there have been reports that people have been able
Speaker 2: to kind of fake their ideas, like they'll swap people
Speaker 2: out during the scanning process to create like a unique
Speaker 2: idea and they'll put the money, you know, like the
Speaker 2: operators are in on it.
Speaker 1: There's all this stuff that.
Speaker 2: Came out in this report, so I think they're still
Speaker 2: figuring out the process here.
Speaker 1: And how many people so far have had their eyeball
Speaker 1: scanned it. How much has world coin paid out so far?
Speaker 2: There have been around two point three million sign ups,
Speaker 2: and I should point out that two million of those
Speaker 2: sign ups happened before the token launch, which was in July,
Speaker 2: so there's only been like a few hundred thousand since
Speaker 2: that launch.
Speaker 1: So those people initially were doing it even though they
Speaker 1: weren't getting any benefit from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they eventually get the token, like they have
Speaker 2: the token now. It's hard to say how much they
Speaker 2: paid out because you don't know how many of those
Speaker 2: sign ups are in the US where you wouldn't get paid.
Speaker 2: But you can understand that this is a pretty significant
Speaker 2: amount of money that they've doled out. Tools for Humanity
Speaker 2: is venture backed. They've raised a lot of money. They
Speaker 2: had a recent round that was over one hundred million dollars,
Speaker 2: so you know this is a well funded project.
Speaker 1: Why is it getting this money? What do the venture
Speaker 1: capital firms who are pouring money into this thing think
Speaker 1: it's going to do? That will provide them value.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I've had the opportunity to talk with several
Speaker 2: of world coins investors, you know, people who have invested
Speaker 2: in Tools for Humanity, the startup that developed the project,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them believe that this will be
Speaker 2: used as a security service, that this is going to
Speaker 2: be the defining thing for showing that you're human online
Speaker 2: and they want a piece of that. I also think
Speaker 2: the fact that Sam Altman is involved in this project.
Speaker 2: I mean he is undoubtedly one of the biggest names
Speaker 2: in tech right now, So I think his presence, his influence,
Speaker 2: that's a big green flag for people in the space
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: I know those two million people who've signed up so far,
Speaker 1: do we know where they are?
Speaker 2: So it doesn't do that geographic breakdown on the website
Speaker 2: that isn't publicly available, but we do know. Worldcoin has
Speaker 2: done a lot of work in Africa and Asia Europe
Speaker 2: as well. I mean they are based in Berlin.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Kenya and the controversy there. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what happened there, because I
Speaker 1: guess there were a lot of sign ups there.
Speaker 2: First, the Kenyan government was very concerned about privacy practices
Speaker 2: here and they actually ordered worldcoin to stop doing sign
Speaker 2: ups and argued that Worldcoin actually ignored that order. The
Speaker 2: governments has suspended all activities associated with the cryptocurrency project
Speaker 2: world Coin due to security concerns interior companies, and there
Speaker 2: was even a raid of Worldcoin warehouses that were orbs
Speaker 2: are being kept in Nairobi. It was pretty tense there.
Speaker 2: And that's not the only place where Worldcoin has run
Speaker 2: into regulatory obstacles. There have been concerns in the UK,
Speaker 2: Germany and Argentina, and it's kind of a case by
Speaker 2: case basis, like it's different reasons in different places.
Speaker 1: I should add that Worldcoin has said it complies with
Speaker 1: all laws and regulations governing the processing of personal data.
Speaker 1: In the markets where Worldcoin is available. It is said
Speaker 1: it does not and never will sell any user personal
Speaker 1: data and that world Cooin was designed to protect individual
Speaker 1: privacy and has built a robust privacy program. You had
Speaker 1: said about how this company was co founded by Sam Altman,
Speaker 1: and we all know chat GPT, which is taking up
Speaker 1: a lot of our attention these days. How much of
Speaker 1: this is his own personal quest to make this happen.
Speaker 2: One thing that was really interesting to me was that
Speaker 2: he made clear that Toolstream Humanity and world Coin that
Speaker 2: they were working with regulators and speaking with them. And
Speaker 2: we can see from his work in AI that he's
Speaker 2: really passionate about representing the industry in a public space,
Speaker 2: arguing that AI needs better regulation. So that's why it's
Speaker 2: so surprising to me that worldcoin has run into these
Speaker 2: issues in so many different places, especially in Germany. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're based there. They should have easy access to regulators
Speaker 2: and be able to work with them.
Speaker 1: When we come back, what would it take for worldcoin
Speaker 1: to really take off? Annah? One of the reasons world
Speaker 1: Coin says they made this identifier was so that it
Speaker 1: could be used as a secure log in for all
Speaker 1: kinds of other things. Is it being used that way
Speaker 1: or other companies using world coin logins as a secure
Speaker 1: way to access their own platforms.
Speaker 2: Worldcoin does have a partnership with the security firm Octa,
Speaker 2: so with one of OCTA's products, you can actually use
Speaker 2: the world ID to sign in. So these are just
Speaker 2: the beginnings of the world ID being used for security
Speaker 2: for access things like that. It'll be interesting to see
Speaker 2: whether there will be more partnerships and how this is
Speaker 2: going to be incorporated into online life.
Speaker 1: You know, we hear all the time about people losing
Speaker 1: their crypto password and they lose all their money and
Speaker 1: it can never be recovered. Is there any concern that
Speaker 1: this thing could wind up losing you a lot of
Speaker 1: money if you can't find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I do think, you know, especially with
Speaker 2: the black market stuff, like there is concern about credentials
Speaker 2: being compromised. I do believe they have a recovery system
Speaker 2: with world id, but it's a pretty intuitive thing, like
Speaker 2: you have an app on your phone. I would say
Speaker 2: it's a little more user friendly than typical crypto wallets.
Speaker 1: And of course there's this big question of this universal
Speaker 1: basic income and using this identifier, using world coin to
Speaker 1: pay people out. Is there any sign that any of
Speaker 1: that is actually going to happen.
Speaker 2: I think you'd have to get governments on board with that,
Speaker 2: and as we've seen, there are a lot of governments
Speaker 2: skeptical of worldcoin. There's also this idea, well, why do
Speaker 2: we need something that uses crypto and blockchain to keep
Speaker 2: track of identity? You know, we already have passport systems,
Speaker 2: we already have national ID systems. So I do think
Speaker 2: there is this question of why do we need to
Speaker 2: add this in why crypto, why blockchain? You know, there
Speaker 2: already has been more of a focus on proof of
Speaker 2: personhood and having access to different things online an era
Speaker 2: where AI is just growing stronger.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because this all sounds just so
Speaker 1: odd and maybe a little bit creepy, and yet like
Speaker 1: every day, one hundred times I let my iPhone scan
Speaker 1: my eyeball to open up the phone. So this technology
Speaker 1: is kind of everywhere. Why is this particular one getting
Speaker 1: so much attention?
Speaker 2: The iPhone example is used a lot, and so is
Speaker 2: that Clear example that I mentioned earlier when you're going
Speaker 2: through airport security. They are different systems, Like the iPhone
Speaker 2: is definitely more of a closed system. Clear has had
Speaker 2: security breaches in the past year that this is a
Speaker 2: service that's been critiqued by regulators. So that does bring
Speaker 2: some idea, you know that maybe this isn't the best
Speaker 2: way to use this technology, But yeah, I think privacy security,
Speaker 2: those were going to be the things that the project
Speaker 2: is going to have to focus on moving forward.
Speaker 1: And you've covered this story from the beginning. What are
Speaker 1: you watching for next?
Speaker 2: It wouldn't shock me if they raise more money in
Speaker 2: the near future. This is a project that has drawn
Speaker 2: a lot of buzz from venture capitalists. That's a blessing
Speaker 2: and a curse. I mean, vcs are under a lot
Speaker 2: of fire, especially in the crypto space. A lot of
Speaker 2: crypto vcs backed FTX. So yes, you know, Vendra capital
Speaker 2: money helps you build your business and things like that,
Speaker 2: but I think there's a little bit of a stink
Speaker 2: around venture money right now, especially in crypto.
Speaker 1: Anna, thanks so much for talking with me today. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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