For the past year, Keneth Byarugaba has been working as a runner for Worldcoin in Uganda. His job is to get as many people as possible toscan their eyeballs into a big metallic orb in exchange for about $60 worth of cryptocurrency.
Runners, who are paid a commission based upon how many Ugandans they recruit to sign up, station themselves in shopping malls, universities and on sidewalks to try to sell passersby on the idea of trading their biometric data for a new kind of digital identity known as a World ID.
“I knew I had what they needed because this was much more like a marketing job where you have to teach people about something and make them pique interest — something that I knew I could do so well,” said Byarugaba, who told CNBC that his knack for engaging strangers was perfected during his days as an Uber driver.
Getting on Worldcoin’s payroll involved jumping through a few hoops.
After passing the application and interview phase, Byarugaba was one of around 500 recruits. A battery of trainings and examinations on blockchain and marketing slimmed his class size down to about 200 employees. The organization’s goal is to make Worldcoin a household name in Uganda.
Byarugaba and his colleagues are selling the idea of being part of a novel world economy, where a scan of your iris unlocks access to universal basic income, online banking and a new form of virtual currency that streamlines the process of paying bills.
The narrative is sticky, and apparently, effective. Worldcoin says more than 2.2million people have signed up since its soft launch in late 2021, though the organization’s ultimate ambition is to scale to 2 billion people.
But governments have expressed concerns over the biometric enrollment process and possible violations of national data protection laws. Some potential applicants are nervous about the aggressive evangelism associated with the product, as well.
“It just looked like a cool, fancy ball, which I discovered later took biometric IDs from people,” said Namureba Abel, who has worked in the crypto industry for the last decade.
“It looked like a scam mainly because of the focus on marketing and signing up new users,” continued Abel. “They were everywhere. They were in every mall here in Kampala.”
Abel works for Yellow Card, the largest centralized crypto exchange on the continent, and is typically a big advocate of emerging tech in the digital asset sector.
“The trigger for me was just their marketing style and how many users are signing up without any formal education,” he said. “They were actually paying people for data.”
‘A bit too dystopian’
When Muvya Muthama went to a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, to get his hair cut at the end of July, a long queue of people caught his eye. The line, he soon found out, was comprised of Kenyans keen on getting 25 Worldcoin “WLD” tokens — a free sign-up bonus given to all those who scanned their eyes into the orb.
Muthama, who also works for Yellow Card, was simultaneously intrigued and concerned.
After asking on-site representatives about the arrangement, Muthama went to a restaurant in the mall and examined Worldcoin’s white paper on his phone for three hours.
“I saw how they were using proof-of-personhood and blockchain, and I thought, alright, cool, it sort of makes sense,” Muthama told CNBC. “And then I saw that it was by Sam Altman.”
As Muthama dug into the larger mission statement around collecting biometric data as a means to differentiate people from robots, he thought it all seemed “a bit too dystopian.”
Peter Mwangi signed up for Worldcoin in May, ahead of the project’s official launch in July.
“When I’m scanning my face, I’m also asking myself some questions internally: ‘What will they do with all of this data?'” Mwangi told CNBC. “There’s a feeling that they’re taking too much away from you.”
Muthama wasalso suspicious for the same reason as Abel in Uganda: cash incentives to sign up.
“They were mostly collecting data from third-world countries. For me, it’s like alarm bells going off,” he said. “I don’t think the majority of people in third-world countries know about data privacy.”
“They’re getting enticed by the free Worldcoin and the money,” added Muthama. “When there’s a lot of poverty within a country, they will just rush to go for that free money without actually knowing what they’re going to put themselves into.”
When Mwangi enrolled in May, he said few on the ground knew there was an incentive to sign up and only 10 people were waiting in line with him. By the time the project officially launched in July, there were reports of lines with thousands of Kenyans queueing for a World ID — and the free money that went with it.
“They were giving people these Worldcoins that people could easily convert to Kenyan shillings,” said Mwangi. “People that I’ve spoken to, they don’t care much about what will happen to that data, as long as they receive some of these coins.”
Mwangi told CNBC that the Worldcoin Orb operators he dealt with in Nairobi “didn’t explain much” and that there wasn’t enough time to fully read the terms and conditions on the app before the scan.
CNBC reached out to Worldcoin to ask about Mwangi’s experience in Nairobi, but the organization did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Worldcoin’s orb-shaped devices scan people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency.
Worldcoin
An eye for an ID
Worldcoin, reportedly valued at$3 billion in its most recent funding round, is making a few big promises, but its overriding goal is to sign up the world’s population for a new, decentralized form of identity.
The premise is called proof-of-personhood — that is, validating the identity of every individual on the planet through biometric capture and then connecting that decentralized virtual ID to an address on the blockchain. The company describes World ID as a sort of “digital passport that lets you prove you are a unique and real person while remaining anonymous.”
According to Worldcoin, this ID could be used to sign into all websites without the user having to forfeit identifying information in the process, such as a name or email. It would also theoretically be untraceable by governments or other organizations. As Worldcoin explains on its website, it doesn’t “want to know who you are, just that you are unique.”
Digital identity management company Okta is a first mover on the adoption front. The business-to-business software firm, which has a market cap of $11.5 billion, gave users the option of logging in with their World ID beginning in June. Social media app Discord also uses World ID for verification. But ultimately, the foundation envisions a future where a World ID could be used to facilitate nationwide votes, among other use cases involving banking and e-commerce.
Ava Labs president John Wu tells CNBC that the self-custody feature of the Worldcoin ID is alsocritical.
“Having privacy, digital identity and having it to yourself — self-sovereign, meaning self-custody — is a big theme in all of the world, not just in web3,” said Wu.
Worldcoin is the brainchild of Sam Altman, the man behind OpenAI and ChatGPT, a large language model-based chatbot capable of human-like conversations that sparked widespread interest in generative artificial intelligence when it launched to the public last year.
At the same time, AI-powered tools have engendered a sophisticated new breed of deep fakes, or digital renderings that mimic the likeness of a real person through voice and video. Collectively, this fresh wave of technology has made it easier than ever to impersonate a human online.
In a way, Worldcoin is Altman’s antidote to the very problem he helped create.
Granting users a unique online persona could theoretically help cut through online fraud and create a virtual world that more closely resembles reality.
As the Worldcoin white paper puts it, “Custom biometric hardware might be the only long term viable solution to issue AI-safe proof of personhood verifications.”
The iris, which controls both the size of the pupil and the color of the eye, is specific to every human. For a decade, the FBI has augmented its fingerprint database with iris imaging. Similarly, Worldcoin’s orb uses multispectral sensors to scan this intricate pattern of ridges and folds in the eye and uses it to assign a singular World ID, which demonstrates definitively that its holder is a human and not a bot.
So far, there are1,500 orbs in more than 20 countries across five continents. By Altman’s estimates, on day three of its launch, one person was getting verified every eight seconds.
A tester operating one of Worldcoin’s orbs in Chile.
Source: Worldcoin
Safeguarding your eyeballs
The concept of a financial network built on a monopolistic currency accessed through your eyeball may sound like a dystopian mark-of-the-beast tale, but Worldcoin’s pop-up locations don’t feel particularly scary or spooky. Think less sci-fi, more airport security.
The process of collecting biometric data to confirm identity is similar in spirit to the scans that Clear does at the airport, and to Apple’s facial recognition system, Face ID.
In the case of Worldcoin, the organization says it uses a cryptography-based, privacy-preserving technique known as zero-knowledge proofs to separate the biometric data from the identifier.
“We designed the whole system to be fundamentally privacy-preserving,” Altman’s co-founder and Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania previously told CNBC. “The iris code itself is the only thing leaving the orb. There’s no big database of biometric data.”
Worldcoin’s white paper indicates that as a default setting, all images are “promptly deleted” on the orb following sign-up, unless the user specifically opts into Data Custody. Either way, Worldcoin says that “the images are not connected to your Worldcoin tokens, transactions, or World ID.”
Data protection is actually core to the whole design of the system, according to Oliver Linch, CEO of digital asset trading platform Bittrex Global.
“What the founders of the project are saying is, ‘This is a way that we have found to move the conversation on how we secure access and how we ensure that the people accessing their online personas in whatever form that takes are the real people — and they’re not AI or bots,'” said Linch.
Byarugaba tells CNBC that privacy safeguards are a key part of his pitch to Ugandans.
“It’s encrypted,” explains Byarugaba. “No information can be dished out of the system. The fact that this is zero knowledge, zero-knowledge identity, there is not much about someone that is known.”
But participants will have to trust that Worldcoin has properly implemented the technology used to shield the biometric data that was captured to create the ID. They’ll also have to trust the firm has followed basic security hygiene.
Vulnerabilities are already showing in some places, according to reports.
Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that hackers installed malware on devices belonging to Worldcoin Orb operators to capture their login credentials and gain access to dashboards containing a mix of internal data and documents — login details that were subsequently listed for sale on the dark web.
Meanwhile, a black market for iris data reportedly sprung up in China in May, with sellers from emerging markets such as Cambodia offering their credentials to buyers in China where Worldcoin’s crypto wallet is unavailable. Chinese crypto site BlockBeats cited prices as low as $30 for the illicit exchange. The apparent appeal of the trade, according to Coindesk, is access to Worldcoin’s WLD token.
The price of WLD is down more than 80% to about $1.45 since its launch, with a circulating supply of just over 126.7 million coins. The white paper says a total of 10 billion WLD tokens will be released onto the market over the next 15 years, a minting model some crypto analysts have compared with other microcap altcoins that have seen their price surge and then plummet, leaving late-stage buyers with big losses.
Reports say the project has faced a mix of other issues, including scammers conning users out of tokens, as well as questions over whether anonymized test data from participants was used to train the AI models that help power the project. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned of other potential security concerns in a July blog post, including “the possibility of 3D-printing ‘fake people’ that can pass the iris scan and get World IDs.”
In response to privacy concerns, the company told CNBC, “The Worldcoin Foundation complies with all laws and regulations governing the processing of personal data in the markets where Worldcoin is available, including the General Data Protection Regulation and the UK Data Protection Act. From its inception, Worldcoin was designed to protect individual privacy. The project has implemented privacy-centric design and has built a robust privacy program, conducting a rigorous Data Protection Impact Assessment and responding timely to individual requests to delete their personal data.”
Some governments have begun to take action against the project.
Kenya suspended Worldcoin’s tech and raided the company’s local offices in Nairobi as part of a larger probe into the project. Authorities in Argentina, France, Germany and the U.K. have all announced inquiries into the business model, citing privacy concerns surrounding the nature of Worldcoin’s highly sensitive user data, including the identity scans that are core to the project.
In response to Kenya’s suspension, Worldcoin told CNBC, “The demand for Worldcoin’s proof of personhood verification services in Kenya has been overwhelming, resulting in tens of thousands of individuals waiting in lines over a two-day period to secure a World ID. Out of an abundance of caution and in an effort to mitigate crowd volume, verification services have been temporarily paused. During the pause, the team will develop an onboarding program that encompasses more robust crowd control measures and work with local officials to increase understanding of the privacy measures and commitments Worldcoin implements, not only in Kenya, but everywhere.”
Although Worldcoin has a lot of big-name backers, not all inspire confidence.
Ricardo Macieira, Worldcoin regional manager, Europe, holds the biometric imaging device, the Orb, in his hands, Berlin, Aug. 1, 2023.
Annegret Hilse | Reuters
Embracing a brave new world
Kenya has stamped out Worldcoin for now, though it’s worth noting the country has a confusing relationship with crypto. The government hasn’t passed a legal framework to regulate the sector, yet the finance ministry is looking to capture a cut of the proceeds, having just proposed a 3% tax on the transfer of digital assets in next year’s budget.
Still, Worldcoin participants in Kenya and Uganda tell CNBC they see a great deal of utility in both the World ID and the WLD token.
Despite his concerns, Mwangi ultimately chose to enroll in the project because he believed in the wider mission of the World ID.
“Currently in Kenya, a large number of people have been conned out of their money when trying to trade cryptocurrency,” said Mwangi. “It got so bad to the point where the government had to warn people not to use it, and banks will prevent people from trying to buy crypto from crypto providers outside the country, because a lot of people are losing their money.”
“From that perspective, it’s easy to understand that Worldcoin is sort of trying to solve for an identity crisis in the crypto market,” he added. “For that reason, I signed up.”
In Uganda, Byarugaba indoctrinates recruits in other benefits of the WLD token.
“People can use Worldcoin as a medium of exchange because it’s designed to be more of a utility token. That means they can use it in their day-to-day payments,” he said.
Byarugaba also listed off a battery of other potential use cases, including global remittances, accessing loans on the blockchain through decentralized finance and paying bills using the WLD token. CNBC has not independently confirmed whether people on the ground in Kampala, Uganda, are able to use the tech to these ends.
The overwhelming majority of users, however, appear to be cashing out their WLD tokens for fiat cash.
“Most of them have exchanged it and put it to use,” saidByarugaba.
Byarugaba, for his part, isn’t paid in Worldcoin’s WLD token, but in Ugandan shillings via mobile money, which is an electronic wallet tied to a phone number that does not require a smartphone or data to operate. Users can pay bills and shop with their phone through SMS texting, instead of having to rely on traditional banking options.
“We get a daily pay advanced to each one of us to handle our daily expenditure,” he explained. “This advance is deducted off the gross monthly pay per sign-up, and we are given what remains.”
Hyundai has unveiled the design refresh of its Ioniq 6 sedan, and announced that it will become a family of cars rather than a single model, with an N Line trim and upcoming N performance model, much like its sister car the Ioniq 5.
Hyundai has been doing great with its EVs lately, hitting sales records and getting great reviews.
Much of that focus has been on the Ioniq 5, an attractive crossover SUV with lots of capability at a good price – and a bonkers N performance version which has been breaking different kinds of records.
The Ioniq 6, conversely, hasn’t attracted quite as much attention, even though it has some records of its own (it’s the most efficient vehicle in the US… for under $70k).
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Between its admittedly odd looks – much more aerodynamic and rounded than the comparatively blocky 5 – and it fitting into the less-popular (but better) sedan form factor, it just hasn’t captured as much imagination as the 5.
But that’s about to change, as Hyundai is giving the model some love with a design update and some hints at new things to come.
We’ve seenspyshots of these design updates before, but now Hyundai is showing them to everyone at the Seoul Mobility Show.
Hyundai showed two models today, the standard Ioniq 6 and the “N Line,” an upgraded trim level with some interior and exterior changes to look a little more sporty. Hyundai has used similar nomenclature for its other models, and that carries over here.
Both have a redesigned front end, making it look more aggressive than the prior bulbous and aerodynamic shape, and narrower headlights.
The N Line looks even more aggressive than the standard model, though, with an even more aggressive front and rear end.
Hyundai says that the redesign will also include interior enhancements for “a more comfortable, intuitive experience,” with a redesigned steering wheel, larger climate control display, upgraded materials and redesigned center console with more physical controls.
Beyond this, the refresh was light on details – intentionally, with a full unveil of specs and changes coming later. We can imagine a lot of the improvements on the 2025 Ioniq 5 will be carried over, such as a native NACS port for example, and potentially a slightly larger or faster-charging battery.
We had also previously heard hints that an N version (yes, “N” and “N Line” are different, no, we don’t know why they used these confusing names) of the Ioniq 6 is coming, and Hyundai reiterated those hints today – even giving us a glimpse of the car in the background of one of its shots.
Now THIS one looks quite aggressive, with a bigger double wing and potentially some changes to the diffuser (it’s hard to tell from the shot, as the N Line also has a modified diffuser).
The ioniq 5N has earned rave reviews from enthusiasts for its bonkers driving dynamics and comparatively reasonable price for a true performance vehicle. But it’s still an SUV format, and frankly, an SUV will never be a sportscar no matter how many horsepower you put into it (I will die on this hill).
The 6, however, with its sedan shape and footprint, could make for a much more compelling sports package once it’s all put together. So we’re very excited to see what Hyundai can do if they apply the same magic they put into the 5 into a new 6N. Looking forward to July.
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Over the next two years, homebuilder Lennar is outfitting more than 1,500 new Colorado homes with Dandelion Energy’s geothermal systems in one of the largest residential geothermal rollouts in the US.
The big draw for homeowners is lower energy bills and cleaner heating and cooling. Dandelion claims Lennar homeowners with geothermal systems will collectively save around $30 million over the next 20 years compared to using air-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat pumps don’t need outdoor AC units or conventional heating systems, either.
Geothermal systems use the sustained temperature of the ground to heat or cool a home. A ground loop system absorbs heat energy (BTUs) from the earth so that it can be transferred to a heat pump and efficiently converted into warmth for a home. Dandelion says its ground loop systems are built to last for over 50 years and should require no maintenance.
Dandelion’s geothermal system uses a vertical ground closed-loop system that is installed using well-boring equipment and trenched back into the house to connect to a heat pump. The pipes circulate a mixture of water and propylene glycol, a food-grade antifreeze, that absorbs the ground’s temperature. A ground source heat pump circulates the liquid through the ground loops and it exchanges its heat energy in the heat pump with liquid refrigerant. The refrigerant is converted to vapor, compressed to increase its temperature, then passed through a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the air, which is circulated through a home’s HVAC ductwork.
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Daniel Yates, Dandelion Energy’s CEO, called the partnership with Lennar a “new benchmark for affordable, energy-efficient, and high-quality home heating and cooling.” By streamlining its installation process, Dandelion is making geothermal systems simpler and cheaper for homebuilders and homeowners to adopt.
This collaboration is happening at a time when Colorado is pushing hard to meet its clean energy targets. Governor Jared Polis is excited about the move, calling it a win for Coloradans’ wallets, air quality, and the state’s leadership on geothermal energy. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said that “ensuring affordable access to geothermal heating and cooling is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and we’re excited to be part of such a huge effort to bring this technology to so many new Colorado homes.”
And it’s not just about cutting emissions – geothermal heat pumps help reduce peak electric demand. Analysis from the Department of Energy found that widespread adoption of these systems could save the US from needing 24,500 miles of new transmission lines. That’s like crossing the continental US eight times.
Colorado is making this transition a lot more attractive through state tax credits and Xcel Energy’s rebate programs. These incentives slash upfront costs for builders like Lennar, making geothermal installations more financially viable. The utility’s Clean Heat Plan and electrification strategy are working to keep energy bills low while meeting climate goals.
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Polestar has removed the Polestar 2 from its US website header in an early sign of how new tariffs will restrict choice and competition for American consumers, thus increasing prices.
The Polestar 2 is Polestar’s first full EV – the original Polestar 1 was a limited-edition plug-in hybrid.
It started production in 2020 in Luqiao, Zhejiang, China, where Polestar and Volvo’s parent corporation, Geely, was founded.
Unfortunately, that interacts with some news that has been getting a lot of play lately: tariffs.
The US has been gradually getting stupider and stupider on the issue of tariffs, apparently determined to increase prices for Americans and decrease the competitiveness of American manufacturing in a time of change for the auto industry.
It is widely acknowledged (by anyone who has given it a few seconds of thought) that tariffs increase prices and that trade barriers tend to reduce competition, leading to less innovation.
It started with 25% tariffs on various products from China, implemented in the 2018-2020 timeframe. Then, in 2024, President Biden implemented a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, effectively stopping their sale in the US. These tariffs included some exceptions and credits based on Volvo’s other US manufacturing, which Polestar had used to keep the most expensive versions of the 2 on sale in the US, while restricting the lower-priced versions from sale. Nevertheless, they were a bad idea.
Now, in yet another step to make America less competitive and inflate the prices of goods more for Americans, we got more tariff announcements today from a senile ex-reality TV host who wandered into the White House rose garden (which he does not belong in). These tariffs do not include the same exceptions as the previously-announced Biden tariffs.
Apparently this has all been enough for Polestar, as even in advance of today’s tariff announcements, the company suddenly removed its Polestar 2 from its website header today.
The change can be seen at polestar.com/us, where only the Polestar 3 and 4 are listed in the header area. On other sites, like the company’s Norwegian website or British website, the car is still there. The Polestar 2 page is still up on the US website, but it isn’t linked to elsewhere on the site (we’ll see how long it stays up).
We reached out to Polestar for comment, but didn’t hear anything back before publication. We’ll update if we do.
It makes sense that the Polestar 2 would still be for sale elsewhere, as it only started production in 2020. Most car models are available for at least 7 years, so this is an earlier exit than expected.
So it’s likely that all of the tariff news is what had an effect in killing the Polestar 2.
Then again, this is also just the second day of a new fiscal quarter. Perhaps the timing offers Polestar an opportunity to make a clean break – especially now that the lower-priced version of its Polestar 3 is available.
Despite the lower $67.5k base price of the new Polestar 3 variant, that represents a big increase in price for the brand, which had sold the base model Polestar 2 for around $50k originally, before all of these tariffs.
Update: Polestar got back to us with comment, but understandably, it doesn’t say much:
Polestar is a three-car company and Polestar 2 is available for customers now. There are a select number of Polestar 2s in stock at retailers that can be found on Polestar.com, but Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 will be the priority in the North American market.
Volvo decided to build the car in Belgium and export it to the US, but now that new tariffs apply to the EU as well, maybe that low-priced, awesome, fast, small EV will instead stay in Europe instead of being shipped overseas.
This shows how mercurial tariff fiats from an ignoramus are bad for manufacturing, as they mean that companies can’t make plans – and if they can’t make plans, eventually, they’ll probably just write the country making the random decisions out of their plans so they don’t have to deal with the nonsense.
And we’ve heard this from every businessperson or manufacturer representative we’ve talked to at any level of the automotive industry. Nobody thinks any of this is a good idea, because it objectively is not. All it does is make business harder, make the US less trustworthy, make things more expensive, and overall just harm America.
Yet another way that Americans are getting screwed by this stupid nonsense. 49% of you voted for inflation, and 100% of Americans are now getting it. Happy Inflation Day, everyone.
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