Elon Musk and Worldcoin only prove that marketing seems more powerful than education
The week in review
with Jason Deane
The big news that’s been dominating my Twitter – sorry “X -” feed (really, Elon?) this week is, of course, Worldcoin, who’s marketing assures us that “it’s time”.
And a lot of people seem to agree.
After all, Worldcoin is one of those things that seems utterly brilliant when you first encounter it. Created by Alex Blania and Sam Altman (yes, THAT, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI) it claims to solve a number of familiar problems, including identity theft. Over the long term, it’s also making steps forward to the much coveted idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all, regardless of where people are in the world.
In between these two grand objectives, there also sit a number of other seemingly useful applications, all powered by the native token of the same name.
To use the benefits of the system, users are required to become “verified humans” and hand over biometric data, in this case retina scans. This means going to an “orb” – a device that does just that while looking simultaneously cool and terrifying at the same time. These have been placed all round the world and videos of the queues that have formed of people trying to do this have become commonplace.
Trading of the token exceeded $145bn on the first day of trading according to CoinMarketCap, pushing its price to an intra-day high of $3.48 from $1.70. On the surface, it all seems great.
For me, however, Worldcoin sits in the same category as CBDCs; they appear benign, useful even, but the convenience they offer comes with some serious downsides that are not immediately obvious to most people. The biggest of all is the same old problem – how safe is your data? Where does it go? We can safely assume a data breach will happen – they always always do – so what will be the impact?
People will queue for what they perceive as “free money” from a faceless group in return for handing over very personal data, but will be sceptical about a truly global, unstoppable network like Bitcoin that would actually give back much of the freedom of choice and autonomy that most would prefer to have anyway. Marketing is more powerful than education. Make of that what you will.
So, ten out of ten for concept (I’d love to see these problems being solved, wouldn’t you?) but this version is not something I’ll be taking part in, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, the markets in general have been weak, choppy and unpredictable with a distinct lack of confidence in any direction. Even XRP’s run is over with the token price sliding slowly and steadily over the week.
Bitcoin itself has been sitting below the coveted $30,000 mark and a rare reduction in mining difficulty of -2.96% took place on Wednesday. Of course, those of us who follow the underlying data, especially around just how scarce Bitcoin is quietly becoming in the background, ignore the noisy market headlines and focus on building and driving adoption.
Speaking of which, “driving adoption” was the reason I was a little late in delivering my column to the editor this morning. Last night’s Bitcoin Racing event at Sambrook’s brewery in London was a resounding success, with a fabulous turnout from the BitcoinHODLers community (which is open for all to join as ever), racing fans, plebs and normies from across the UK.
The place was absolutely and utterly packed, the racing sim worked perfectly and the beers were flowing well. Perhaps too well in my case.
Nevertheless, new Bitcoiners were born last night and you can get a taste of what went on by following Bitcoin Racing on Twitter here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to lay down and recover ready for the weekend!
Have a great one!
Yesterday’s Crypto AM Daily
In the Markets
The Bitcoin Economy
*Data can be found at https://terminal.bytetree.com/
🌅Total crypto market cap
🔵 $1.18 trillion
🔻 0.8%
What Bitcoin did yesterday
🔺 Daily high $29,568
🔻 Daily low $29,200
Bitcoin market capitalisation
🟠 BTC $566.707 billion
🟡 Gold $13.109 trillion
💳 Visa $491.09 billion
Bitcoin volume
🪣 Total spot trading volume $11.03 billion
🔻 15.5%
SP500
🔻 0.6%
Fear and Greed Index
Bitcoin’s market dominance
📊 49.75
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
💪 44
Values of 70 or above indicate that an asset is becoming overbought and may be primed for a trend reversal or experience a correction in price, while 30 or below indicates an oversold or undervalued condition.
What they said yesterday
The power of using the public, shared Ethereum network is that firms can do business with each other while settling transactions and recording business logic on a shared ledger — where neither party has to trust the other to maintain the ledger.
Michael Nadeau, author of The DeFi Report
Whether you’re a Bitcoin expert or a total newbie – or even somewhere in between – you can now join the new HODLers Telegram community to learn more… or share your insights with others!
Our goal is simple: to provide a safe place where people can ask any question they want about Bitcoin, even if they think it’s a daft one! Learning Bitcoin takes time and we generally have the same questions when we first encounter it, so we know from our own experience having somewhere to ask a real person a specific question can be of great value!
There’s also access to great learning resources and, to cap it all off, we run monthly competitions to win great prizes such as tickets for events, VIP passes, exclusive access to talks and webinars or even just some Sats to add to your stack, all courtesy of our partners!
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So, if you’re a beginner, or know someone who is, take our fun five question multiple choice quiz and join the group today. Of course, if you’re an expert, you’re also welcome to join and help others who are looking to understand Bitcoin as an asset and the industry as a whole.
T’s and C’s: Open to UK residents only. All ages are welcome in the community, but you need to be over 18 to enter competitions. No purchase required.
All feedback on Crypto AM Daily in association with Luno is welcome via email to James.Bowater@cityam.com 🙏🏻
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Sam Bankman-Fried: A tissue of lies soaked with fake tears?
Three-in-four wealth managers are gearing up for more cryptocurrency exposure
Crypto.com granted FCA licence to operate in UK
Q&A with Duncan Coutts, Principal Technical Architect at IO Global
Jamie Bartlett – on the trail of the missing ‘Cryptoqueen’
MPs are falling silent over potential of cryptocurrency
Erica’s ‘Crypto Wars’ handed honours in Business Book Awards
Crypto AM: Features
Crypto AM: Founders Series
Crypto AM: Industry Voices
Crypto AM: Contributors
Crypto AM: In Conversation with James Bowater
Crypto AM: Tomorrow’s Money with Gavin S Brown
Crypto AM: Mixing in the Metaverse with Dr Chris Kacher
Crypto AM: Visions of the Future, Past & Present with Alex Lightman
Crypto AM: Tiptoe through the Crypto with Monty Munford
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Crypto AM: Events
Cautionary Notes
It’s definitely tempting to get swept up in the excitement, but please heed these words of caution: Do your own research, only invest what you can afford, and make good decisions. The indicators contained in this article will hopefully help in this. Remember though, the content of this article is for information purposes only and is not investment advice or any form of recommendation or invitation. City AM, Crypto AM and Luno always advise you to obtain your own independent financial advice before investing or trading in cryptocurrency.