McCormack slams Worldcoin, saying ‘Bitcoin is world coin’

Peter McCor­ma­ck, the host of the ‘What Bit­coin Did’ pod­cast, tweet­ed a scathing assess­ment of World­coin, infer­ring the project is redun­dant as “Bit­coin is world coin.”

McCor­ma­ck slammed World­coin using sev­er­al unflat­ter­ing descrip­tors, includ­ing “sh*tcoin,” “VC dystopi­an rug pull,” and “exit liq­uid­i­ty” – enforc­ing its already dubi­ous reputation.

Worldcoin unable to shake its reputation

World­coin burst on the scene in late 2021, imme­di­ate­ly stir­ring con­tro­ver­sy over its goal to scan people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency.

The company’s vision pro­posed a glob­al par­tic­i­pa­tion mod­el, with peo­ple col­lec­tive­ly ben­e­fit­ing from a grow­ing decen­tral­ized dig­i­tal econ­o­my. For this to hap­pen, wide­spread mass adop­tion of the under­ly­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cy would require incen­tiviz­ing new users to join at scale.

To man­age new join­ers and com­bat fraud from dupli­cate reg­is­tra­tions, the project put for­ward using bio­met­ric safe­guards via its Orb-iris scan­ning technology.

“Our approach relies on a cus­tom bio­met­ric device – we call it the Orb – that ver­i­fies the unique­ness of a per­son through iris recog­ni­tion, while ensur­ing their pri­va­cy through zero-knowl­edge cryptography.”

Crit­ics voiced con­cerns on sev­er­al fronts, includ­ing inva­sion of pri­va­cy, the long-term goal of intro­duc­ing a uni­ver­sal basic income, which some deem a “flawed idea,” and the scope for Orwellian con­trol. How­ev­er, pro­po­nents argue that the project could lead to more wide­spread adop­tion of cryp­tocur­ren­cies and con­tribute to a more inclu­sive glob­al economy.

This unsa­vory rep­u­ta­tion has plagued World­coin since it was first announced. But with the project ramp­ing up devel­op­ment efforts recent­ly, includ­ing rais­ing $115 mil­lion in a Series C fundraise led by Blockchain Cap­i­tal, the con­cerns are mounting.

Blockchain Capital is not phased.

VanEck Advi­sor Gabor Gur­bacs ques­tioned why investors would “throw mon­ey at non­sense” instead of back­ing Bit­coin and oth­er tru­ly egal­i­tar­i­an projects.

“VCs and fund man­agers con­tin­ue to throw mon­ey at non­sense with per­verse incen­tives yet fail to sup­port Bit­coin and real infra­struc­ture projects that make the world bet­ter.”

Ref­er­enc­ing des­per­ate sign-ups, par­tic­u­lar­ly in under-devel­oped parts of the world, On-Chain Detec­tive, ZachXBT said World­coin users “are just peo­ple that were exploit­ed.”

Twit­ter account Bit Paine echoed McCormack’s sen­ti­ment, pre­dict­ing the project will be “the biggest dump-the-pre­m­ine-on-retail in his­to­ry.” On the oth­er hand, World­coin sup­port­ers believe that the project’s focus on bio­met­rics and pri­va­cy could lead to a new and more secure iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem as World ID keys are report­ed­ly self-custodied.

Gen­er­al Part­ner at Blockchain Cap­i­tal Spencer Bog­a­rt said he, too, thought World­coin was “some dystopi­an Orwellian night­mare.” How­ev­er, Bog­a­rt said he changed his mind after look­ing deep­er – as iris scan­ning solves the prob­lem of Sybil attacks by dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing bots and humans.

“World­coin has a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish and scale a new pri­va­cy-pre­serv­ing prim­i­tive for the inter­net (World ID) that enables any appli­ca­tion to eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish between machines (bots) and humans.”