Sam Altman’s Worldcoin valued at $1 billion

The Worldcoin startup, behind the launch of the eponymous cryptocurrency, raised $25 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Investors valued it at $1 billion, according to CoinDesk.

Participating in the round were Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and a group of angel investors, including FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

Sam Altman announced Worldcoin in June 2021. The project collects users’ biometric data, paying for it with its own cryptocurrency.

Altman does not participate in the startup’s day-to-day operations, serving as an advisor. Worldcoin is led by Alexander Blania, who is listed as its co-founder.

On October 21, Worldcoin officially unveiled its cryptocurrency, designed as a layer-2 solution for the Ethereum blockchain. The supply is capped at 10 billion coins: 8 billion will be distributed among users, 2 billion reserved for investors and the creation of the Worldcoin Foundation.

The distribution of the digital currency will occur through scanning the retina with a spherical device, which the startup calls the Orb (sphere). It creates a unique digital IrisHash for each user, after which biometric data is deleted with no possibility of recovery.

Introducing Worldcoin, a new cryptocurrency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible.

Details about how it works: https://t.co/DLcAmUA4u3 pic.twitter.com/xC3W2U6Xi3

— Sam Altman (@sama) October 21, 2021

Blania noted that the size of the biometric payout depends on the stage of development at which a user joined the initiative — the more participants, the smaller the reward. He estimated the approximate amount at between $10 and $200.

The cryptocurrency is credited in several tranches, distributed over two years. 10% of the payout is available immediately in the project’s digital wallet.

Based on its own forecasting models, the startup expects that by 2023 Orb will be used by more than a billion people. According to Blania, Worldcoin is working with a ‘very large international manufacturer’ that is ready to produce about 50,000 spheres per year. By November 2021, production lines will churn out 4,000 devices per month.

Earlier in August, the developers of the MobileCoin cryptocurrency raised $66 million in a Series B funding round.

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