Worldcoin Could Enable Wider Distribution of Crypto Than Even Bitcoin, Says CoinFund

Worldcoin (WLD), the identity protocol officially launched this week by OpenAI's Sam Altman, could distribute crypto more widely than bitcoin, said Jake Brukhman on CoinDesk TV on Thursday, founder and CEO of CoinFund, a venture capital firm backing the project.

"One of the core propositions of Worldcoin is to build a system that can create a distribution of a cryptocurrency that's even wider around the world than bitcoin is today," Brukhman said.

Worldcoin could onboard "billions of users" to crypto markets, said Austin Barack, a partner at CoinFund, in a blog post this week. Prior to the launch, Worldcoin had a little over two million verified users worldwide, and as of the time of writing, 941,000 World App wallets have been created, according to a Dune analytics dashboard on the project.

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At its core, Worldcoin is an identity protocol, aiming to verify that users are unique and human using iris scans, artificial intelligence and zero-knowledge proofs.

The network launched on Monday, sparking questions around privacy and its tokenomics.

That hasn't stopped people from signing up, however. Altman claimed on Twitter Wednesday that one person signs up every eight seconds around the world.

At launch, the protocol is moving from Polygon to Optimism, a Layer 2 ethereum scaling solution, and users have been prompted to update their apps so that they can create Optimism wallets and transfer their beta tokens to the new blockchain.

Read more: Worldcoin Hype Causes Optimism to Leapfrog Arbitrum in Daily Transactions

CoinFund invested in Worldcoin in February 2021 in its series A round alongside heavyweights such as a16z and Multicoin Capital, according to Crunchbase.

"What attracted CoinFund to Worldcoin is its large global vision and Web 3-focused technology," Brukhman said Thursday.

The CEO said he's not worried about the token not being available in the U.S. at the moment due to regulatory concerns, and believes that WLD will eventually be available stateside.

Read more: Worldcoin Token Slumps Amid Crypto Community Unease