Portugal Bans Worldcoin (And Spain Isn’t Far Behind)

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Remember Worldcoin? 

They’re about to be booted out of Spain and Portugal!

Not sure what we’re on about? Allow us to explain…

Worldcoin is a crypto project founded by OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, designed to prove a person’s humanity online, in a world of AI is everywhere.

The company requires a one-time iris scan by an orb-like bot that:

1. Verifies you’re human (or at least, in possession of a human eye-ball)

2. Then rewards you for being human, by giving you $WLD

All while using zk-proofs to protect your bio-data.

…but protected or not — it all sounds a bit dystopian, no? 

From every discussion we’ve ever had, when anyone hears Worldcoin’s pitch, it translates in their head something like this:

“Give us a scan of your eyeballs (we’ll keep it private, promise!) — and in return, we’ll give you some magic internet money…”

…and in reaction to such a pitch, it’s only natural to think:

“The perceived risk (giving some opaque private tech company my bio-data), does not outweigh the potential benefits (earning some little-known cryptocurrency).”

Well, turns out its not just our circle of friends, family, and colleagues that feel that way, but Spanish and Portuguese law-makers as well.

(They’ve just ordered Worldcoin to halt all data collection in their countries).

Portugal’s government specifically is under the assumption that Worldcoin is going against its citizens data protection rights (but they’re also fearful of this pooled information somehow being used maliciously in the future).

And we can’t blame them!

We write about zk-proofs all the time, and believe them to be robust in protecting personal information.

And still: there’s isn’t a chance in hell we’d take a Worldcoin iris scan.