Kenya Panel Urges Shutdown of Worldcoin's Crypto Project Within Country (reuters.com) 9
A Kenyan parliamentary panel called on the country's information technology regulator on Monday to shut down the operations of cryptocurrency project Worldcoin within the country until more stringent regulations are put in place. From a report: The government suspended the project in early August following privacy objections over its scanning of users' irises in exchange for a digital ID to create a new "identity and financial network". Worldcoin was rolled out in various countries around the world by Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It has also come under scrutiny in Britain, Germany and France. The project still has a virtual presence in Kenya and can be accessed via the Internet, even after the August suspension. The regulatory Communications Authority of Kenya should "disable the virtual platforms of Tools for Humanity Corp and Tools for Humanity GmbH Germany (Worldcoin) including blacklisting the IP addresses of related websites," the ad hoc panel of 18 lawmakers said in a report.
A game of Monopoly also begins... (Score:2)
...by giving each player the same amount of "free" money. Anybody who has ever played knows exactly what the end game wealth distribution looks like.
There's really no good reason to be airdropping a cryptocurrency, iris scans or not. Just put the coins on an exchange and let people buy them, because in the extremely unlikely event that $SHITCOIN_DU_JOUR actually ends up being worth something, they'll all ultimately end up in the hands of the wealthy anyway.
OpenAI's shitcoin (Score:2)
Sam Altman should have a little class, he shouldn't be involved with a shitcoin. The Kenyan connection dragging up the Kenyan workers tagging child porn for OpenAI is not great PR either.
On the other hand, those ClosedAI researchers really found the sleezeball to lead them they deserved. So it's entertaining at least.
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"If you don't buy NFTs now, you'll regret it this time next year!"
AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Fuck.
Right.
Off.
Recourse when an account is compromised? (Score:2)
Hypothetical scenario: You have your retinas scanned, which are immutably tied to your Worldcoin account. Later, your account gets hacked via some other means that didn't require biometric authentication (because retina scanners can't possibly be used for every transaction). Then what... do you go see the eye designer [youtube.com] and get a whole new identity?
Let them cook, jessie. (Score:1)
First off, cryptocurrencies offer a way to bypass traditional banking systems. In Kenya, not everyone has easy access to banks, but almost everyone has a smartphone. So, crypto b
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Cryptocurrency by itself is has some nice things. Decentralization, provided there is some way to securely move blockchain ledgers to ensure that everyone has a copy to protect against double-spending, multi-sig, which allows for people to make money as escrow services, only confirming a transaction when Alice has paid Bob and Bob has received his widget.
However, the scammers and criminals have completely polluted the well. That, and cryptocurrencies need to have more anonymity, and the ability to prune t
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Cash is used many orders of magnitude more often than crypto for scams and criminal activity. Crypto is too easy to track as blockchain activity is fully transparent.
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Crypto can be more easily laundered. For example, Bitcoin tumbling, CoinJoin, moving to a currency like Monero and back to BTC which makes tracing it difficult (assuming one doesn't just move the exact amount back), etc.
Transactions are permanent with most cryptocurrencies and there is no anonymity... but wallets are still anonymous, so if a wallet is created out of the blue and winds up with a ton of funds getting sent to it, it could belong to anyone in the world, assuming there is no activity on it.
The