Right
When Worldcoin (WLD) popped on the scene it garnered quite a bit of chatter and I wrote about it here. My takeaways:
- it's supposed to fight AI from taking over by proving "personhood"
- it's creepy
- it's supposedly Universal Basic Income (UBI) motivated, at least, that's the stated motivation, a more cynical person might suggest ulterior motives
Two weeks later, I wrote about how I saw WLD playing out going forward. My takeaway...
- the economics of constantly emitting a token, and expecting its value to not drop, are not good
- anyone who receives WLD might do well to cash it out as quickly as possible
At the time, I was right. WLD was just under $2 and was dropping. It kept dropping as I expected, down to just under $1.
Wrong
Since, then, I've been wrong. The price steadily rebounded. A couple of weeks ago, for some reason, WLD saw a substantial spike up to nearly $5. Well, I didn't see this coming.
Despite this being the third time I've written on it, I don't follow Worldcoin other than by chance catching news items at times. The recent spike does make me curious though...was it a news release of some sort? That's my guess.
Still right
A news story a week ago might reveal the fuel behind the spike. Coindesk recently reported Worldcoin's latest news. The upshot of the story is this...
- first, Worldcoin is making partnerships with legacy outfits like Reddit, Microsoft, and Shopify
- secondly, Worldcoin is now allowing levels of verification of personhood
Let's flesh this out a small bit.
Regarding the partnerships, for an outfit that popped on the scene purporting to be entirely innovative and redefining everything about the game, this seems as though they're actually just settling into the old game. This is fine, you've got to make money to pay the bills somehow. You've got to work and work the angles and infrastructure and the world that we live in. Making business connections is not a bad thing. People benefit from capitalism doing what it does. Still, this seems like an awfully quick pivot from Worldcoin vision 1.0.
Regarding the levels of personhood, hold on. I thought the premier point of Worldcoin was that a person must prove they are human. That was/is the whole point of the orb, isn't it? The more I think on it, the entire orb thing doesn't make sense. Here's why...
Worldcoin argued that as they investigated how to prove a person is in fact a human (why does just typing that sound stupid?), they concluded the only way possible and practical is to scan irises face-to-face. They promised then and now that the data is not saved, it's only used for signing up. This begs the question, "If I walk up to a WLD booth and say, 'Hi,' how is that not proof enough that I'm human?" You know I'm a human and no data is saved.
I believe Worldcoin would answer by saying something to the effect that the uniqueness of one's iris is used to help generate private keys which are assigned to the now-proven human. Well, then, couldn't I walk up, say, "Hi," rolls some dice, generate my keys, and use that instead?
I hear Worldcoin saying, "Yeah, but how do we know that you wouldn't do it, then go to the back of the line and do it a second time or third? We need to be able to stop repeaters." So, you do save that iris scan then?
And regarding the levels of personhood, wait, wasn't the whole point of Worldcoin to prove personhood, full fledged humanhood? Are the levels just the stepping stones to the orb, that input device used to not save any data?
Between the affiliations with the legacy groups and the levels of personhood, things start sounding rather like a Labor Day used car lot sales extravaganza.
Somehow, the words spoken seem to have leaks when trying to hold water.
I still say I'm right about Worldcoin and it's future going forward. My main premise: you simply cannot continually dole out tokens to ever-expanding numbers and expect them to hold value. Perhaps for a while which game might work, fueled with news and hype, this hot air balloon of a charade might fly. Long term, I don't see how it does. Hot air balloons don't fly forever without continual hot air. And value and inflation doesn't work that way.
Summary
I say, "I still I'm right!"
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*quote is a little distorted, but great nonetheless
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I see the creepiness but I really like the ambition. Maybe I will look further into this and maybe even fomo a little into it.
I just mainly don't see how the economics will work...how they expect to continually dole out tokens, to more and more people and continually, and expect a value to retain.
By the way, consider joining the Sting chat at https://chat.peakd.com/t/hive-116655/0 It's kind of Discord-on-Hive. You're officially invited. And merry Christmas! 🙂 🎄❄️ !LUV
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I agree, but with corresponding hype, you can probably get away with it for a long time.
As for the concept of "levels of personhood". That seemed crazy to me when I first read it. But with further pondering, I realized that it's a state that I've been assessing on a regular basis. Ever since I was a teenager. Though I've usually expressed it in terms like "how many pints has he had?" 🍻😂🍺
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