Big news late at night! Pantera led the $52.5 million round, buying the dip on $WLD at a 26% discount—can Sam Altman’s AI narrative still hold up a coin that has fallen 97%?

Have you heard? Last night, the World Foundation sold 217.4 million $WLD tokens in one go, raising $52.5 million. Pantera Capital led the round, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, and Susquehanna Crypto. All tokens are locked for one year—pretty clearly a long-term bet.

But there’s a detail you need to pay attention to. On-chain analyst Yu Jin monitored the transfer 8 hours before the announcement, and the trade price works out to only $0.24 per token—about 26% cheaper than the market price at the time. After all, $WLD is currently trading at $0.326, with a circulating market cap of $1.22 billion and a fully diluted market cap of $3.24 billion, ranking #47. Yet in March 2024, it once surged to $11; from the peak to the bottom, it fell by a full 97%.

This isn’t the World Foundation’s first time doing something like this. Back on March 28, this year, they just did an over-the-counter deal worth $65 million with four counterparties at an average price of $0.2719, of which $25 million was set with a 6-month lock-up period. Put together, the World project has cumulatively raised $492.5 million. What’s the money for? The official line is to promote World ID technology, for enterprises, users, and AI agents.

World’s core is that iris sphere. Stand in front of the camera, scan once, and it can prove you’re human without revealing who you are. Now this technology has been integrated into Zoom video conferencing, Tinder dating, and concert ticketing—officially, it claims 39 million users worldwide, including 18 million people who have completed iris verification. On the project’s third anniversary, they released the third-phase roadmap, aiming to expand human proof into more scenarios.

But when discussing this project, you can’t avoid Sam Altman. He’s the CEO of OpenAI and also one of World’s co-founders. A lot of people online treat $WLD as a stand-in for OpenAI before it went public—buying $WLD is like indirectly betting on Sam’s future empire. The moment OpenAI has any movement, $WLD jumps along. But you have to stay clear-headed: legally, financially, and operationally, World is completely independent from OpenAI—no equity cross-holdings, and no parent-subsidiary relationship.

Now for some good news. On July 21, Grayscale filed an application for a Worldcoin ETF with the SEC. If approved, it would list on Nasdaq, with The Bank of New York Mellon serving as transfer agent and BitGo as the custodian. Robinhood also listed $WLD on June 23. Even Eightco Holdings changed its Nasdaq stock ticker code to ORBS; it previously raised $250 million in preparation for launching a WLD treasury strategy. Technically, World ID 4.0 introduces a fee system: the credential issuers can charge applications, while end users remain free—the goal is to let the protocol “print its own cash flow.”

But there are also plenty of bad pieces of news. Business Insider reported that Tools for Humanity (the for-profit company behind World) last year simultaneously launched two internal investigations: one pointing to improper use of executive funds, and the other alleging violations in the Thailand business. Executives were accused of approving payments to a foreign company, with the purpose not being procurement, but to artificially pump the price. The Thailand counterpart has also been accused as an international wanted scam suspect. Regulators across multiple countries have also raised serious questions about iris scanning and data privacy.

So is this an opportunity or a trap? Institutions are “bottom-fishing” at $0.24, while retail traders are hesitating at $0.326. Grayscale’s ETF and Robinhood’s listing may boost expectations for liquidity, but investigations and regulation are like knives hanging over the head. With $WLD down 97%, will history repeat itself? The data says both rounds of major private placements have lock-up periods of around one year, meaning sell pressure is temporarily sealed. But what happens after one year?

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