The creature of Silicon Valley technology millionaire Sam Altman, Worldcoin aims to scan the biometric data of around one billion people by 2023. So far, it has scanned the eyeballs of 100,000 people from different countries. However, many experts in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies speak of the risk of fraud and the lack of "collateral" on the data collected. Additionally, analysts pointed to Worldcoin's threat to individual privacy and the concept of decentralization as an affront to bitcoin's founding principles. "It's worrying when private entities start offering monetary incentives to collect personal data without any safeguards and / or restrictions on what they can do with the data," software developer Brandon Church told BeInCrypto in an interview. Citing past failures of big techs to protect personal information, Church expressed concern about private companies collecting biometric data in a crypto industry that largely continues to operate outside of regulatory oversight. “No one collects data just to keep it hidden, and private entities have proven time and time again that they play quickly and freely with user data. The data itself has become a product that can be sold. Providing unique data sets makes a very profitable business ".
Despite these opinions or the equally negative opinion expressed by Edward Snowden, Worldcoin has already raised $ 25 million in funding from major investors such as Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Linkedin, crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures. According to its website, the company calls itself a "new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed equally to as many people as possible." Worldcoin has built a device called the Orb, which is used to scan people's iris and acquire unique biometric identifiers. The identifiers are then "converted into a short numeric code, allowing you to check if the person has already signed up". In a sense, this should prevent the possibility of double-dipping for those individuals who have already been paid. The Orb device has so far been distributed in 12 countries. For his part, Sam Altman, the founder of Worldcoin, obviously denies that the company stores people's data. "I think Worldcoin is more secure than the centralized services we use today," he tweeted in response to Edward Snowden's criticism on October 23. "All Worldcoin, or anyone else, could ever say is whether someone has already signed up for the service."
by Alessandro Crea Friday 29 October 2021 18:00