Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency initiative led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has soared to unprecedented heights—joined in flight by a dozen other AI-related tokens and stocks.
Worldcoin’s WLD digital currency registered a remarkable 21% price increase in the past 24 hours, catapulting from $7.08 to an all-time high of $8.96 per token—before settling at a robust $8.20 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.
The leap marks a staggering 300% appreciation in February alone, a month that began with WLD valued at a mere $2.20.
Worldcoin’s big pitch is to be the primary decentralized digital identification platform that gives every person on the planet the ability to prove their humanity—distinguishing real people from bots or AI algorithms. To achieve this, Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the protocol, developed World ID, a privacy-centric solution that allows users to confirm their “humanness.”
This verification process relies on the Orb, an iris-scanning device that creates a unique IrisCode for each user. This code, akin to a fingerprint, is stored on a decentralized blockchain, ostensibly protecting it from fraud.
As dystopian as it sounds, people are piling up to present their eyes to the Orb and registering their iris. The World App, the project’s first wallet, surpassed 1 million daily users this week.
The idea has gained traction, especially among young people and citizens in developing countries in which the payment they get in exchange for registering their identities is valuable enough to be significant secondary income.
The excitement isn’t confined to Worldcoin alone. The broader AI token market is also ablaze, with notable projects like The Graph, Ocean, and Render Protocol seeing over 50% gains in the last seven days.
Fetch AI is up by 75%, the lonh-forgotten Golem went up 68%, and SingularityNET recorded a 120% increase.
The AI fervor extends to the stock market as well, which was already buoyed by Nvidia’s announcement yesterday of record profits. Nvidia’s stock (NASDAQ:NVDA) has risen 16% since then, achieving a near 30% increase in February to reach an ATH of $785.
Other tech giants, including AMD and Microsoft, have also seen significant upswings, with AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) experiencing an 11% spike today and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) enjoying a 3% rise. Meta, not to be left behind, has climbed almost 4% today, contributing to its 25% growth over the month. All of these stocks are flirting near their all-time high prices.
The resurgence of interest in AI has been a driving force behind the recovery of the S&P 500 since last year, with technology companies the focus of discussions among analysts. A spike in related searches in Google Trends further indicates a widespread fascination with AI and its potential impact on the cryptocurrency market and the broader financial landscape.