Coinbase's Former Head of Communications Joins Worldcoin

Elliott Suthers, the former head of corporate communications at U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), has become head of comms for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Worldcoin (WLD), the iris biometric crypto project founded in 2019 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Suthers, who also has experience working in government policy in Washington, D.C., had been with Coinbase since 2018 and oversaw the growth of the business as it became a publicly traded company in the U.S.

Worldcoin has been a divisive project with its biometric data-harvesting "orb," a chrome sphere about the size of a bowling ball that contains a lens for scanning eyeballs. The orb ensures that anyone who gets an account is a person and not a robot – something that's going to be vital when it comes to recognizing authentic human interactions versus those driven by sophisticated AI programs, Suthers said via email.

"No project in the world today has the potential to distinguish humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes and eventually show a potential path for programs like AI-funded UBI," Suthers said. "Most crypto projects think about their customer base in the thousands, or maybe in the millions for an exchange or DEX, Worldcoin is thinking about how it can help billions of people globally."