Worldcoin co-founder Alex Blania’s recent refusal to disclose the token’s distribution model has raised some eyebrows, including that of John Deaton, who has expressed his dismay at his action.
Something Fishy With Worldcoin?
A video surfaced on Twitter in which Alex Blania, during a recent Bankless interview alongside fellow co-founder Sam Altman, refused to respond to the host’s question on Worldcoin’s token distribution, citing the regulatory uncertainty in the US as why he couldn’t answer the question.
The Twitter user (@Pledditor) posted the video with the caption:
“When a crypto founder refuses to answer questions about token distribution🚩🚩🚩”
In the video, the host asks Blania to explain the distribution of the WLD token and Blania is quoted as saying: “Look, many of the details we can’t talk about here for the regulatory uncertainty in the United States.”
The video quickly went viral and sparked controversy as to whether Worldcoin was just another ‘ponzinomics’ or, indeed, Alex Blania was honest about why he couldn’t answer the question.
However, renowned crypto lawyer John Deaton, who represents some XRP holders, quickly reacted to the video in a tweet.
Deaton’s tweet read:
Wtf did this dude just say? Did he literally say that he can’t talk about how WorldCoin is distributed “because of the regulatory uncertainty” in the United States? 🤦♂️
If there was ever a signal to RUN AWAY as fast as you can from a project, HERE IT IS. Is he saying he can’t tell you how to acquire it or what you’re acquiring because he might get sued? 🤷♂️
Now that I think of it, is he being smart and just following legal advice or is he a moron. 🤷♂️
Deaton stated that Blania’s action was enough reason for investors to run away from the project. However, the SEC and its Chair Gary Gensler weren’t spared from Deaton’s wrath as he also slammed them for their role in creating a state of turmoil regarding the regulatory environment in the crypto space.
“But this is an example of the chaos caused when you have bad faith regulators like @GaryGensler intentionally keeping the regulatory environment as unknowable,” Deaton said.
A Bad Start For WLD?
This development comes less than 48 hours after the launch of Worldcoin’s highly-anticipated WLD token. There were, however, some positives for the token as leading crypto exchanges like Binance, Gate.io, and KuCoin were quick to list it upon launch.
WLD price recovers above $2.2 | Source: WLDUSD on Tradingview.com
Founded by OpenAI’s CEO Altman, Worldcoin aims to solve the problem of differentiating between humans and bot-related projects. This problem has stemmed from the growing use of artificial intelligence in almost all spheres of life. The team plans to resolve this by giving humans unique digital identities to differentiate them from artificial intelligence algorithms.
The WLD token spiked to as high as $3.30 upon launch. However, it seems the token’s price has negatively reacted to the issue of its token distribution and other privacy concerns as it dumped to as low as $1.66 on Monday, according to data from CoinGeko. WLD is currently trading at around $2.12 at the time of writing, with a 16% decrease in the last 24 hours.