WorldCoin: A Biometric Cryptocurrency Proof of Personhood

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In order to give out UBI, you need something to prove that someone is a human. Sam Altman has this idea that in order to make UBI happen, you need an actual verified way to say this person who is trying to claim this UBI payment is a human and not part of a botnet. So WorldCoin is a biometric cryptocurrency proof of personhood project. They have these orbs, these metallic spheres, basically the size of a bowling ball. The orb scans your iris and creates from that a unique digital fingerprint.

On Sunday night, a crane arrived in downtown San Francisco to take down the Twitter sign from the company’s office building. The crane’s arrival marked the death of Twitter, the brand, and the start of X, Elon Musk’s everything app. Today, why Elon’s acquisition feels more and more like cultural vandalism and what, if anything, will replace the global town square.

Then, is Sam Altman’s universal basic income cryptocurrency app Worldcoin an iris scanning tool to save humanity, or just another attempt to get rich on crypto?

Plus: a trip to Google’s robotics lab, where artificial intelligence models are creating breakthroughs.

Additional reading:

Casey breaks down Twitter’s rebrand.
The launch of Worldcoin — and the story of how it recruited the first half a million users.
Kevin’s column is a deep dive into Google’s new robotics model, which melds A.I. with robots.