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Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Token to Launch Monday (bloomberg.com)
68 points by Brajeshwar on July 24, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 93 comments



The name couldn’t sound more like a scam if they tried.

There was OneCoin, a $4 billion Ponzi whose leader is on FBI’s Most Wanted list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneCoin

(IMHO it’s bizarre that OneCoin never bothered to actually deploy a cryptocurrency. If they had done that and then manipulated its price, they would be just like every other useless cryptocoin and the bag holders would be licking their wounds quietly. The end result would be the same as a plain Ponzi but the FBI would never have been involved because token-utility-innovation-something-something.)


They didn't have the technical expertise. Ignatova is a lawyer and the other guy had a business/finance degree I think. This was before the days when anyone could just set up a simple ERC-20 token contract with the help of tools, Ethereum didn't even exist back then.

They tried to recruit a blockchain expert to built them a chain after they'd already started the ponzi but apparently didn't find anyone who was willing to work with them (for maybe obvious reasons).


I guess they were being too cheap with the offers made to the prospective developers. European business people tend to assume that you can hire any kind of software developer for 3000 euros / month.

The history of web3 shows that, if the money is right, competent people will put all their qualms aside and do the work to enable the blockchain rip-offs.

OneCoin should have offered 10 million to the developer because they could have afforded it. Then they wouldn’t be hunted by FBI, and $ONE would be just another forgotten altcoin that gets occasionally pumped up on Telegram channels.


On top of that, there's the Worldcom scandal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldCom_scandal


Is the name onecom already taken? I so want to use it for my, never to be launched, start-up!


Well, there's one.com, which I believe is a fairly honest hosting provider.


Yeah, I have talked to some people who work there and as far as I can tell they seem like a pretty legit company.


onecom.com has a nice ring to it, too, doesn't it? Added benefit of looking like a scam-rip-off for one.com!


There’s a .world TLD, so you could collect them all with one.comcoin.world


Honestly, I would go and reserve that domain if I were you! That thing only can go to the moon!


This snake simultaneously develops LMMs and a global biometric database that they hope to be required to use the internet[1] due to the problems widespread LMMs create. Pure evil.

Let's not forget that we are also seeing TPM/WEI type schemes being widely developed and deployed. Ubiquitous biometric surveillance and unforgeable cryptographic signatures for everything you think or do in our now-hyperconnected world is absolutely terrifying.

It's impossible to see all of this (and other dystopian visions from his davos friends like brain transparency[2]) coming to a head at the same time as anything other than a declaration of war on computers, the internet, and general purpose humanity.

I'm begging and pleading with each and every one of you reading this -- stop this. Do everything in your power to stop all of it. This brave new world being created is evil and humanity may not survive it.

[1]From their other co-founder:

> So my high-level response is that something like World ID will eventually exist, meaning that you will need to verify [that you are human] on the internet, whether you like it or not. I think that's certainly going to happen with the progress in AI. It’s probably going to happen in the next couple of years.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/07/10/an-or...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfqD5aW0X5U

EDIT: @dang can you please purge my IP address from the account creation/login database and logs? I am not comfortable speaking truth to power and I know he was former president of yc. You can go ahead and lock the account too, I don't need it any more. Maybe one of you can email dang for me, I don't want to associate with this account any more than I already have. Thank you for reading.


This hypocrite chose a proper time to scam a new coin ...

For me all his latest moves look as the work towards building a dominant power, that will make 1984 look like a funny and naive tale.


IMHO defence against this is not using computers, personally.

Worldcoin appears to be yet another attempt to solve an actual problem, an that is preventing simulation of a biological being in a electronic network.

Back in the day a password and a username was good enough to assume that a biological being is authenticated through a keyboard and taking actions in a system. As the automation become easier and ubiquitous we started using Captcha's, then we moved into fingerprinting and behaviour analysis however at the current stage we mostly lost.

I have no idea if Worldcoin or anything similar will work or if they will attempt to create some kind of dystopia but the problem is fundamental one to using electronic interfaces.

Maybe the solution for all this is going back to being human, and leave all the communications to the machines who would serve us. In other words' assume machine when in not in person. The end of symbiotic life with machines, going back to humans using tools.


Folks can still use machines to communicate with others with relative confidence. You can exchange handles irl, use private public key pairs published on your personal site, etc. This runs the problem of invalidation if private keys are leaked, but you can always change it. Web if trust has existed for a long while.

This only addresses chatter with unknown entities. Either you or I or both of us could be humans or machines. But does it matter?


> This only addresses chatter with unknown entities. Either you or I or both of us could be humans or machines. But does it matter?

It matters quite a bit to people trying to sell (and people trying to buy) goods and services beyond the range in which they can physically attract new customers/discover new vendors.


> at the current stage we mostly lost.

Maybe in parts of the world. That loss is definitely not evenly distributed – some countries/regions do have working digital signatures, e-government etc.


Why are you concerned about upsetting the "power" by stating the obvious? You didn't even go ad far as say you would directly compete against this by running sites that compete with worldcoin using ones.

My plan is to offer e2e messaging services, and non human authenticated sites forever, along with running tor exit nodes, etc. I will go until I am destitute. I refuse to surrender to online kyc implementations. It's like a page out of Enders Game. No thanks.


There seems to be two things going on here:

1. World ID - a database of retina information about people.

2. Worldcoin - a cryptocurrency aimed at incentivizing people to give over this data.

Rather than rehashing a debate about cryptocurrency that's already well-trodden, it's worth looking at what's new here: their iris scanning tool as a way of validating a user's uniqueness.

This is already a well established problem domain, companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple struggle to verify that users are unique (with an account or multiple accounts tied to a single human).

4chan blocks the ip addresses of bad users, many services require a phone number to sign up, some sites have tried requiring a credit card, Facebook I believe uses the social graph to figure out how likely an account is to be real. Apple, Microsoft, and Google all use some combination of biometrics and telemetry data to authenticate users. I've noticed more sites requiring government ID (see LinkedIn's verification process).

I'm not seeing any obvious advantage that World Id will have over these existing systems.

Also any time biometric data comes up it's worth pointing out that if your biometric data gets stolen unlike a password there's no easy way to change it.


> I'm not seeing any obvious advantage that World Id will have over these existing systems.

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you don't see the obvious advantage because you are looking for the obvious benefit from the perspective of a user.

Having a database of international retina information (which is practically an immutable property), spending history, and connections graph, is probably invaluable to intelligence agencies, oppressive regimes (or, you know, just simply "regimes" as they are all oppressive to some degree when the opportunity comes, as the covid years taught us), big tech/pharma, military industrial complex, news organizations and other arms of the ruling class.


Permanently accurate maps are always of interest no matter what the scale.

Retina databases are also the identity framework of choice for global identity and payments.

There is no more valuable graph database than one secured by unchangeable and immutable PII.

I see it that way. Not a great look for the guy, but I think smart people often launch their experiments under the cover of stupid pretenses so they only have to lean into what gains traction. Why commit to experiments -- just test it and see if it works. If it fails, cool idea and tried it. If it succeeds, one of the most valuable data platforms for AI… you said it and you’re spot on imo.


> 4chan blocks the ip addresses of bad users, many services require a phone number to sign up, some sites have tried requiring a credit card, Facebook I believe uses the social graph to figure out how likely an account is to be real. Apple, Microsoft, and Google all use some combination of biometrics and telemetry data to authenticate users. I've noticed more sites requiring government ID (see LinkedIn's verification process).

IP addresses, phone numbers, government IDs are all forms of outsourcing the problem of identity verification to another organization (IANA, phone company, Social Security Administration in U.S.) so we should ask if those organizations will continue to be able to effectively distinguish real humans from AÍ-powered bots armed with the ability to “deep fake” any person, using whatever tools and techniques those organizations have today.

The implications seem staggering: AI bots that can collect your social benefits, withdraw funds from your bank, open lines of credit in your name. The modern economy might not be able to function if this happens.

From another article:

> The company’s identity technology will be important in a world where artificial intelligence raises new questions of what’s human and what’s not on the internet, [Tools for Humanity co-founder and CEO Alex] Blania said. It’s also an example of the overlap between the crypto and AI industries.

https://archive.is/k5j6j


Why not just let everybody make multiple accounts? Spam? We need to remove the incentives that make people send spam. If there is universal healthcare nobody would bother selling viagra online. Harrasment? We need to work on reducing sexism in general. And so on.

I feel that sometimes the direction where technology "wants" to go points us to a better society. Fighting it and preserving the status quo leads to a lot of difficulites. The techno-optimists of the 90s had a good point.

If we imagine a world where almost every service is free, has an API, and little restrictions, the society that allows that is going to be much nicer than if everything is behind a paywal, controlled and sanitized, and cryptographically verified.


Multiple accounts don’t help when you’re moving money, because you need to trust that you’re moving money to the right person, and verifying even a single account is difficult.

Making everything free doesn’t solve this since we still have to move goods to people who need them without fear that they go to scammers instead.


Yes, threat models are probably going to be vastly different in a post-scarcity society (and we’re not only talking money/natural resources scarcity).

If you know of a workable way to achieve that, please do share it!


I don't care about multi-accounting, but I care whether the other users on a platform are human or if 99% of them are bots.


My point is, why do people set up bots? They are probably trying to get money. Looking at it naively through a system designer's goggles: Fixing it at the platform level by verifying if a user is human or not is fixing it at the wrong level. It's just a band-aid. We should instead fix it at the societal level so that nobody has the incentive to set up a decieving bot.


I can't see eliminating all desire to lie, spread disinformation, propaganda, scam people, astroturf, manipulate opinions, cheat at videogames and so on WORLDWIDE being feasible at all this century, perhaps ever. Ending all wars and conflicts forever is one of the many prerequisites.

Somewhat-AI-resistant techniques to prevent bots from overrunning a platform seem at least feasible.


So am I supposed to go buy an iris scanner to be able to access some websites? If I do can’t I hack it to make it output a different fingerprint?


> Rather than rehashing a debate about cryptocurrency that's already well-trodden, it's worth looking at what's new here: their iris scanning tool as a way of validating a user's uniqueness.

No it isn't. That's exactly what they want you to do - get distracted by the (alleged) tech and pay no attention to the scam behind the curtain.


>I'm not seeing any obvious advantage that World Id will have over these existing systems.

* it's more universal; not all the world are americans, using american systems. Good luck using a social graph, phone number or credit card for verification of somebody from Papua New Guinea. Or for somebody who is otherwise off the grid.

* if it works, it's less prone to hacking, since you control the points of registration, and you can verify that a physical human being is there to scan their retina


Gitcoin Passport tries to leverage existing solutions.


>> World ID, Worldcoin

This will be banned in EU instantly.


Scam Altman at it again, after scamming all donations for OpenAI and making it ClosedAI shortly after


My favorite is Scam Bankman Fraud


I can't wait to have my retina scanned and associated with my OpenAI account for pre-mined cryptocurrency. Where do I camp out for this epic moment in history?


Just head to your local Worldcoin Operator, who'll scan your eyes with his magic balls.


There's already a secondary market in fake Worldcoin retina scans.[1] Costs around $20.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...


I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the spelling of WorldCoin and WorldCom.

Does anyone remember WorldCom?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Inc.


Why does it feel like we're back in the early 2000 and people are just launching any non-sense project that pops into their head.

At least things where more cheerful and colorful 20+ years ago. Can we get the playfulness back and drop all the dystopia?


There's a very loud group of venerated tech bros whose strategy for the last 5+ years has been to promise a brave new world of magic technological solutions to an ailing economy and divided society. Most of these solutions have turned out to be overstated at best, or an outright lie at worst.

We've internalised all the dystopian rhetoric and compounded it with the disappointment of false solutions, while these charlatans have siphoned off tonnes of VC money and sailed off into the sunset (or into federal prison.)


We can. Just ignore anyone who works on "scaling things up". Its like paying attention to brainless robotic ants for too long.


Seems like the OpenAI CEO job is just a side gig for his main hustle, which is this Worldcoin stuff. Here's hoping that it goes out the same way as the Libra coin.


Throw in a magic tech cauldron biometric data, "AI" and crypto and wait to see what sort of abomination emerges.

How did tech become so dystopic in such a short time? Does it say something about the tech itself (the nature of hardware and software), the mental and moral substrate of the techies building it or how current society embraces and supports new possibilities opened up by technology.

It does feel as if a vast multitude of non-dystopic tech universes is simply starved of any chance to grow.

There must surely exist an antidote to this poisonous coctail, a tech segment that has an unequivocal feel-good factor associated with it?


> the mental and moral substrate of the techies building it

ding ding ding. tech-bros are going to enshittify society in parallel to enshitifying software.



> As a Worldcoin Operator, you earn money for everyone you sign up with an Orb

Uhuh.


"It's not a pyramid scheme, it's not even a scheme, per se..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5lsemxaJo [The (US) Office - pyramid scheme clip]


Now the first thing to know is it’s not pyramid selling https://youtu.be/bxxGNtRG-_o

(The first comment on that video is “she’s definitely into crypto now” which seems right)


As a Uber driver you earn money for everyone you transport.

As a sales rep you earn money every time you make a sale.

Signing someone up with an Orb != making another Worldcoin Operator


and this orb... can i ponder it?


I assume from what I've heard this is going to be very centralized, because I can't see how you could fit the concept into a system and retain the global ordered clock function. Bitcoin is very careful to only order transactions by what block they are in and not where they are in the block. Etherium does not do this, leading to some pretty horrible and/or hilarious front running attacks.


> Bitcoin is very careful to only order transactions by what block they are in and not where they are in the block.

Transaction order within a bitcoin block definitely matters: if transaction b spends the ouput of transaction a within the same block, then a MUST preceed b. Also, the coinbase transaction must be the first. Other than that the order is arbitrary.


What is with the ADHD of tech billionaires nowadays? Sam not busy enough with OpenAI? Musk not busy enough with Tesla? The world needs eye balls scanning worldcoins about as much as it needs X.

It's really a pity we use talent, money and attention on things nowadays for this rather than trying to invent new things that actually make a positive difference in people's lives.


They're not really 'tech' billionaires; they are marketing and hype billionaires who happen to have picked technology as their field.


And similarly what is happening at the boards of these companies.

Are investors actually okay with the CEOs not being 100% committed to growing the business.


Exactly, can a (small) startup CEO do this? Will the investors approve?


Billionaires are not immune to the reduction in attention span that their own products cause. We are living in a feedback loop.


Longtermism is the new take on secularizing religion

Musk is going to preserve consciousness by shooting it into the Heavens… I mean come on; can’t be more on the nose

The transition from story mode is going to hit some road bumps


> This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.


Bloomberg have been doing this for years, I believe it's just a relatively simple automated rewrite/republish from various news wires. Most larger newspapers/sites have some level of automation from news wire to published article.

This isn't some new LLM based system replacing the work of journalists.


What a great time to be alive. Two of the most revolutionary technologies - cryptocurrency and AI - merged together to form a better world.


I can't tell if your comment is starry-eyed optimism or acid sarcasm. My mind has been rent in twain.


My upvote goes to, dryly delivered, acid sarcasm. Love it!


Not sarcastic as the AI comment is true enough for the sarcasm to not work


You cant be serious. "Most revolutionary tech" should be "most trusted tech" to estimate the impact of yet another crypto currency.


The association between crypto and the current AI boom is really something that makes me doubt the soundness of the latter.


His moat is not telling what training data he used. Big tech cannot overtly use copyrighted material. In the time the big tech and the open source catches up, this crypto pump cycle is supposed to enrich and fund him and his future short-term fun projects.


This is not about OpenAi in case you think that, it's about a project where they scan your iris and give you a digital ID based on that, to solve the 'proof of personhood' problem. The training data comes from them simply paying poor people to have their eyeballs scanned, the project has been in the works for quite a while. HN isn't exactly their target demographic, you'd be surprised how many people are sadly ready to have their eyeballs scanned for a bit of cash (which they cleverly pay out in their own made-up token, so it doesn't actually cost them that much).

For the record since to many users here this is obviously yet another crypto scam, I want to point out that most who're seriously into blockchains/decentralization are against it too, check out the replies from crypto people to his announcement: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1683187148437192704

Sam Altman is an investor, not a crypto native.



On Clement St. here in SF I saw some posters plastered on the shutdown walgreens. I thought it was just some weird scam I never heard of. It felt fake. I'm kind of shocked to see its Altman's project.


Crypto is just modernized ponzi schemes.


It is, but if we could distribute some currency globally and equitably that at least takes it one step towards being a real currency, at least in theory.


So what, we can have a larger base of people negatively impacted when it inevitably falls over?


No, because it is based on false scarcity. Ponzi schemes reward those who get into it early and rob money from those who join the scheme later.

Bitcoin cannot exist as real currency unless it has some real concrete value backing it. That concrete value needs to exist in tangible form for it to be stable.


Bitcoin is the best bet at doing that. Otherwise, what's your better idea than bitcoin to distribute such a coin in such a way?


If someone asks to scan your retinas for a cryptocurrency it is time to seriously consider shunning.


did they register it with the SEC?


App just shows a message "It's time." with a "Notify me" icon. Is it really launched or will it happen later today?


And the whole world will accept it, billionaire's extravaganza

No wonder more than half of the world wants to build an alternative with the BRICS


Issue though is that BRICS are far more corrupt and exposed to billionaire extravaganza.


Heh that’s unfair. Some of them also have institutionalized government corruption that drains all the profits to their inner circle


What makes you believe we are not more corrupt than they are?

We are just fighting each other over everything, wasting time over billionaires ideas, Musk vs Zuckerberg for the "everything app" for example, China moves forward it seems, they already have it, and is not driven by profit, and the rest of the world seems to want to move along too with them

A lot to hate about China, but they seem to have some great ideas, and are able to enforce them to 1.7b people without a flinch

It also seems like they want to fight corruption [1], and their wish to switch to a digital currency seems to go in that direction

"why expect those who got you in trouble to become the solution?"

[1] - http://brics2022.mfa.gov.cn/eng/hywj/ODMM/202207/P0202207155...


as someone only familiar recently with Sam Altman and OpenAI, it completely changes my perspective of his motives. literally a product no one is asking for and is sharply dystopian.


many people who would give their retina data for $10. many.

quite vulgar and exploitative (and apt) to use a crypto token for this.

casino capitalism.


cool, a new grift.


the good news is it's not going to succeed


Let's see how market responds to it.


I'll bet 1,000,000 Worldcoin it tanks within a month.


Shades of Pascal's Wager in there.


I’d take that bet only on the condition that if you can’t render the 1mil (tanked) worldcoin, you’re not responsible for any other form of payback.


So how do I claim mine?


Scam Altman moving on from OpenAI before llama causes it to crash


I'm sure authoritarians like Trudeau, pro-clipper-chip Biden, or pro-cdbc Sunak etc. will love this sort of thing.

It has already been a miracle how many world leaders received Altman peddling "his" AI.

This may be a trial balloon for the authoritarians to force this new surveillance tech on their subjects.




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