It’s a sci-fi trope we’ve seen a million times.

The villainous space admiral peels back his eyelids for the retinal scanner. A laser flits over his eye and the door opens with a pneumatic hiss.

We know that our hero’s going to need that guy’s dead body later, or at least his eye, to get where he needs to go. But while AI or virtual reality have rarely risen above science fiction cliché, eyeball scans could soon become a part of our daily reality.

And Worldcoin wants to change the world and do just that…

But it needs your eyeballs.

Espresso Shots

☕️ Crypto Investments Hit High

The start of October saw the largest digital asset investment inflows since July, based on data from Coinshares.

And $43 million in inflows went to Bitcoin investment funds. Additionally, Bitcoin’s trading volume increased 16% in the week leading up to October 9, and $1.2 million went to Bitcoin short positions.

Additionally, the launch of six Ethereum futures ETFs brought in nearly $10 million in inflows. It may seem like a decent start, but as the report points out, that’s a fairly lukewarm market response for a fund of this nature.

“The new ETFs attracted just under US$10m in the first week, highlighting tepid appetite, particularly in comparison to the launch of futures(-)based Bitcoin ETFs which saw US$1bn in the first week,” the report reads.

It’s not a matter of fighting the current, as any yoga-practicing day trader will tell you, but going with the inflow.

☕️ Upbit’s Hacking War

The South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has reportedly fended off 160,000 hacks in the first half of 2023.

That comes to a staggering 879 hacks per day, on average.

The hacks were disclosed in a statement to the South Korean media outlet Yonhap News, by Upbit’s parent firm, Dunamu.

Dunamu didn’t mention which kind of hacks Upbit defended against, but the firm did admit that the hacks had more than doubled from 73,200 attacks in the first half of 2022.

Again, 160,000 is an insane number of hacks, a figure almost as large as the number of times I ask my girlfriend if we can get drive-through McDonald’s for dinner.

☕️ What Sam Can’t Say

The DOJ is attempting to block any mention of the Anthropic AI investments made by SBF.

According to the filing, the defense’s mention of certain, profitable investments will “present a substantial danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, and waste of time.”

In short, the DOJ is concerned that Sam’s investment of customer funds in the hyper-profitable Anthropic AI may mislead the jury into believing that the FTX victim’s funds can be easily returned and that the venture may actually have been profitable.

Anthropic AI, a research-based AI company, is currently in talks with Amazon for a $4 billion investment deal, with the potential to raise an additional $2 billion.

FTX owns a $500 million stake in Anthropic AI. If the Amazon deal goes through, Anthropic AI will be valued at around $30 billion.

Unofficially, the DOJ may also block the defense from using videogame metaphors or referencing Dungeons & Dragons alignments to describe Sam’s actions as “chaotic good” or “lawful evil.”

Polled Brew

Spilling the Beans

Worldcoin Wants Your Eyeballs 👁️ 🌎

Worldcoin is an AI-meets-crypto project from Sam Altman, one of the founders of OpenAI.

What does the project entail? Well, it wants to bring the entire globe into a new era of digital identity and cybersecurity.

How, you ask? By scanning every human’s eyeballs. This would create a new, online register not dissimilar from the FBI’s fingerprint database.

And that just raises more questions. How would Worldcoin manage that?

It’s pretty simple actually. Worldcoin has set up silver, globe-like kiosks all over the world. Kiosks that they’ve ominously dubbed “the Orb.”

You might have some reservations, but remember that Apple convinced most of us to give it our fingerprints and facial scans in the name of “security.”

But while it’s one thing to lock thieves out of your iPhone, it’s another thing to let your eyeballs be scanned under the lofty goal of global, digital security.

And that’s why Worldcoin sweetened the deal and offered participants 25 of its native WLD token if they’re willing to have their eyeballs added to Worldcoin’s database.

25 WLD is worth roughly $42.

That might not seem like a lot of money to you or me, but in some nations that’s a pretty hefty sum.

Now, this is where Worldcoin’s operation gets a little controversial.

Since its launch last summer, Worldcoin has already scanned more than 2.325 million people in 120 countries.

However, the most successful “registration events” seem to happen in severely impoverished regions of Sudan, Kenya, Ghana, Indonesia, and Chile.

Naturally, this has drawn some controversy and even Worldcoin’s founder Sam Altman has admitted to “a certain ick factor.”

And that’s just regarding the dystopian nature of bribing users with crypto for their biometric data. It takes it a step further when the person you’re bribing is a villager with no means to access the crypto on offer.

The Kenyan Legislative Committee has even put a halt to Worldcoin’s activities in Kenya pending further investigation into the privacy, security, and total legality of the operation.

Chile, on the other hand, seems to be embracing Worldcoin.

200,000 Chileans have already taken the plunge and had their eyeballs scanned by an Orb. This accounts for at least 1% of Chile’s population.

And for some, such as Carlos Santibañez, the decision is already paying dividends.

Santibañez, who’s a 29-year-old Chilean from a small town called Llanquihue, had his eyeballs scanned back in September 2022, and his $42 incentive has already bloomed to $150.

“After a bit of reading, I found that their data collection is less invasive than what other companies keep,” said Santibañez in an interview with Decrypt. “This made me think: ‘Well, at least I’m making something off this information.’”

It’s a fair point. There are plenty of companies out there already harvesting our data, but at least Worldcoin has the decency to offer some compensation.

So, if an Orb kiosk shows up in your town, we’re going to leave the eyeball-scanning decision up to you.

Is Worldcoin the future of security? Is this digital, biometric equivalent of the fingerprint database going to give the FBI a run for its money? Or is Sam Altman raising a clone army and we’re just not wise to it?

It’s a fascinating story and we’re looking forward to seeing how Worldcoin’s global presence develops.

We don’t know what Worldcoin will do next, but we do know that the eye-ball is in Worldcoin’s court.

Crypto 101

Inflows: This is simply money entering a business or investment fund through sales and financing.

It’s the opposite of cash outflow, which is money leaving a business.

The Last Sip

The Last Sip: While we’re on the topic of sci-fi tropes turned modern marvels… whatever happened to flying cars? That was supposed to be the sure sign that we were in the future. Until I can honk back at a flock of Canadian geese as I divebomb their migration V in my floating Honda Civic, we’re still living in the Stone Age.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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