No, You Shouldn’t Trade Your Eyeballs For Crypto

This piece first appeared on my newsletter, <a href="https://trendmill.substack.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Trend Mill</a>. You can <a href="https://trendmill.substack.com/subscribe" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">subscribe for free</a>. The crypto industry is rife with scandal, scams, rug pulls, shady characters and money-grabbing celebrities. The technology became the fundamental building block for world-changing concepts like NFTs and Web3 and other less-savory practices like helping organized crime move money and pay for illegal activities. Even the cases where it did something “well” have proven tainted — just look at golden boy Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX, or Binance, which is now <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/22be8c3d-8bae-4edf-ac3f-915794662f2c" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">under investigation</a> for alleged illegal practices, including fraud. Everything remotely crypto-connected should be met with skepticism. Every new character who enters the picture claiming to “change the world” should be met with distrust until proven otherwise. None more so than the newest project on the scene, one that wants to scan your eyeballs to prove your “humanness” in return for crypto. What could go wrong? Worldcoin is a project co-founded by Sam Altman, the chief executive of the ChatGPT developer OpenAI. The ambitions are lofty — how else will you suck up that sweet VC money, of which Worldcoin has already <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/25/sam-altmans-crypto-project-worldcoin-got-more-coin-in-latest-115m-raise/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">raised</a> $115 million — with the moonshot being to “enable global democratic processes” and eventually fund a universal basic income. The pitch includes the whole Buzzword Bingo card. The first line of the Whitepaper <a href="https://whitepaper.worldcoin.org/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">reads</a>, “Worldcoin was founded with the mission of creating a globally-inclusive identity and financial network, owned by the majority of humanity.” Across the homepage, all the others are present; community, ownership and blockchain protocol. Check, check, check. <a href="https://stephenmoore.medium.com/trading-eyeballs-for-crypto-da3ef88de89a">Read More</a>