Free crypto promises in exchange for “The Orb” by scanning eyeballs
It’s another day in 2022, so here’s another extremely bizarre and dystopian story related to cryptocurrencies.
A cryptocurrency company has been traveling the world asking people to gaze at a giant reflective ball in exchange for the promise of crypto compensation. BuzzFeed News (opens in new tab) The currency, dubbed Worldcoin, is specifically aimed at sparsely populated countries, explained.
Worldcoin has been setting up kiosks in African and Asian countries, run by trained staff, to convince people to give up their biometric data. The story goes that once Wolrdcoin launched, stall owners would offer a T-shirt and a $20 voucher in exchange for an iris scan of the mysterious orb. The scan is claimed to avoid multiple single-person registrations, but it’s a very convenient way to collect a lot of biometric data for free.
The proposal to appreciate the coin has additional promises once available. It’s an untrustworthy deal, but it doesn’t sound scary to those with bad luck, no matter how evil that sphere must have been.
However, as many would have expected, this appears to be more of a hoax, but not North Korea this time (opens in new tab). Although several months have passed, many people who signed up for vouchers reported receiving nothing. Kiosk operators are reporting unreliable operation and problems with the sphere. Generally speaking, it all seems as dodgy as anyone involved in the program would expect.
Despite mounting evidence of malicious intent, Worldcoin bosses continue to press ahead. The narrative is that this cryptocurrency will be used to provide everyone with a universal basic income. This is also a reason to target poorer countries, in addition to the need to collect broader biometric data. It also promised to anonymize the biometric data collected, but did not say when.
Given that Worldcoin has yet to deliver on the fundamentals provided or provide a solid timeline for any other promises, it is difficult to take any of these promises seriously. Instead, it looks like a bunch of wealthy people are targeting people who are desperate for their own good. If looking for a giant sphere for the promise of future counterfeit money sounds too stupid to be true, maybe it is.