Sam Altman's Crypto Project Worldcoin Faces More Scrutiny in Kenya

World Coins. Nairobi warehouse raided by Kenyan police local reports. This is how I like to see public servants work. I like to see them actually protect the people and provide them with actual service. So the recap is the Kenyan government suspended world coins operations last week citing security concerns. If you guys aren't familiar with how world coin works, they basically take your biometric data, they give you like $50 some of their world coin and they store it safely for you. Um Kenyan Capital Markets Authority was concerned about the ongoing registration and told Kenyans that world coin was not regulated in Kenya. Kenyan law. States individuals have the right to not have any personal information unnecessarily acquired or necessarily revealed. And the latest um Kenyan police and multi agency officials raided Nairobi warehouse. World coin raid was conducted under the supervision of the official office of data production consumer confiscated documents and machines. Machines contain data gathered by world coin, which is actually the funny part of this because they're supposed to keep your data safe. So we don't know the people that registered that their data is there. Who knows if that's gonna get out or not. And this is a conundrum that we were going to be seeing on a global scale. Um, I understand what world coins use cases and I understand the predatory practices that they're, um, that they're doing. Um, but at the same time there's public servants on a global scale that might not approve or appreciate it, especially some of these other regions that, um, have different privacy laws in the United States of America. I wanna actually toss this over to will and get your thoughts on it because why not the most important thing here in this whole article is that the commissioner of Kenya's Office of Data protection. His name is Immaculate. Immaculate Casa, which is a very, very cool name. If you're arrested by someone named Immaculate, I would just be be be OK. I would just be like, OK, whatever you can do whatever you want with me, you're a great name. OK? Let's go into the story itself a little bit. That's just on the side. You start moving around money and you start scanning people's eyeballs over the world. You're gonna turn heads and I bet opening eye in the whole world court, world Coin team saw a little bit of this coming at some point, right? We've seen this with so many different tokens over the years, so many different projects they roll out globally and then they hit roadblocks along the way. This one notable, of course, because it happens so fast and typically these things take a little bit longer, but there was reports as of even like last week, uh people lining up in countries all over the world to get their eyeballs scanned for like the 25 world coin tokens that you were issued. I believe we even have one person on the show who did get their eyeballs scanned so we can talk about that in just a second here. Uh I, I think like this whole story shows you how difficult it is to launch a crypto project. This reminded me a lot of Binance, which of course has jumped all over the world. It's an exchange. It's not a token, but they do have a token and they've been chased out of a lot of areas just because people are not quite ready for crypto in a lot of ways. And World Coin itself is a more ambitious project. Zach. Yeah, it's my eyeballs guys. I gave my eyeballs up to a World coin. I'm fine with it. They're all I got. I was there, it was there in Japan. I was at the event. I, I scanned them. I'm ready for the A I future guys. I'm gonna have my proof of personhood. It's gonna be great. And you guys are just gonna be duplicated by the A is it's gonna be, it's gonna be bad. But yeah, I think a lot of local factors are at play here. I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert in like Kenyan politics. So just full disclosure there. Uh but I think this ruffled a lot of feathers, right? There was long lines in a lot of these um jurisdictions where this uh scanning thing was taking place across the world. And that caused issues reportedly in Kenya specifically with uh impeding access to various things. So it's unclear what's motivating a lot of these things, I think specifically with this instance. And it's hard to say if this is um uh well thought out plan by Kenyan officials or if this is um something else, right? And I think um you know, that is the problem with uh trying to roll out a project that is uh relies on proof of personhood, right? You gotta show up, you gotta give your eyeballs and you gotta be able to um have your hash be matched to a certain data in your phone and elsewhere such that your identity is uh confirmed, at least according to the math behind these things. So that I don't know, I really don't know what to make. This story. World coin is getting hit from all angles. I would say this is not the only jurisdiction that is kicking the tires on this thing and wondering if everything's a, ok. Um So it's gonna be interesting to see if they can sort of again uh right, the ship, weather the storm and continue on with what is pretty ambitious and audacious in terms of goals, uh both for this project and other things that are sort of within the Sam Altman A I uh Empire. So, yeah, interesting one to watch. Definitely World Coin is sort of center stage right now, I think in the crypto conversation. Um But yeah, Jen, what do you think? What are you thinking? I think the World Coin had to kind of expect this to happen in multiple different jurisdictions. And this is probably the first I know like late last month, um the data regulator regulator in Kenya came out um uh with a tweet advising people to, you know, if you're going to go get your eyeball scanned, make sure you understand what's going on. Make sure you ask the right questions. Make sure you understand how your data is being stored. I don't think you can rely on people to ask the right questions if, if they're not, if they don't really understand first the data regulation, they don't understand how their data can be used in the future. And so I look forward to seeing what comes from this personally. The jury is out on World Coin for me. I don't think it is super bad or super good. I'm still waiting for more information here. Um But I will say that the data regulators have really failed consumers on so many different levels when it comes to the government itself, storing your data and a lot of private companies. And so I don't think that this is as big as a story as everyone is making it. There are a lot, there are private companies out there who don't store your data. We see this store your data properly. We see this come out in the headlines. We see this play out in the courts when there are data breaches and these companies are sued. And so I don't think that this is as novel as maybe some are making it out to be guys. Talk about Bitcoin. I know Wendy. Wendy put on the tiara, but we have to bypass it and go and talk about Bitcoin for a second before we close it. It's all related. It's all related.