#加密市场观察 Sam Altman's Left Hand and Right Hand: Who's Selling the Only Cure When AI Kills Internet Trust?

The Hidden Clues and High Stakes Behind the Surge
Just yesterday, World (formerly Worldcoin), a project long dormant in the crypto space and even dubbed by some aggressive investors as the “Zero Coin,” suddenly woke up as if on steroids. In just 24 hours, the WLD token surged by 18%, pushing its market cap to $2.5 billion. To retail investors who constantly watch candlestick charts and let their moods swing with green and red bars, this was an inexplicable bullish candle, but to veterans familiar with Silicon Valley's power plays, it’s just the tip of a grand chess game orchestrated by Sam Altman. The trigger for this bullish move was a leaked confidential report from Forbes: OpenAI is secretly developing a new social networking app. In this era of misinformation and post-truth, creating a social app isn’t surprising; what’s shocking is its core barrier—OpenAI is considering verifying “you are a person” through iris scanning technology. Does that sound familiar? Yes, this is exactly what World’s “Orb,” the silver metal sphere, has been doing — and it’s the only reason for its existence.
Capital markets never throw money around without reason; every dollar flows with a clear logic. This rally is essentially Wall Street and Silicon Valley elites betting that Sam Altman is playing an extraordinary game of “mutual destruction.”
Look at his strategic layout: his left hand is OpenAI, creating endless, hyper-realistic AI robots with GPT, flooding the internet with synthetic data; his right hand is World, holding the only token that can prove “I am a human.” When the chaos created by the left hand threatens to erode the trust foundation of the internet, the right hand’s antidote becomes priceless. It’s a perfect business cycle of creating a virus and selling the vaccine exclusively.

What if Tomorrow the Internet is Filled with “Dead People”
We need at least a little honesty to face a chilling fact: the traditional internet trust system has completely collapsed. Recall how we used to verify ourselves with CAPTCHAs and phone numbers to prove we weren’t robots. But in front of GPT-4 and the upcoming GPT-5, these defenses are like wet tissue paper—easily torn. Today’s AI can effortlessly forge perfect resumes, impersonate your ideal partner on social media, and even manipulate financial markets’ sentiment. This is the so-called “Dead Internet Theory”—most online interactions might be just robots talking to themselves, and we humans are merely unwitting spectators.
OpenAI’s valuation may be heading toward $730 billion, with Nvidia and Microsoft lining up to invest, but they face a huge risk: if the “identity verification” problem isn’t solved, OpenAI’s ecosystem will be drowned in garbage data it created itself.
When AI can’t distinguish whether it’s learning from humans or feeding on another AI’s “data loop,” the model will collapse. At that point, World’s value is no longer just a nebulous crypto project; it becomes a cornerstone for internet operation, the last dam preventing the digital world from falling into heat death. It’s like the gold rush of the 19th century—everyone rushing to mine gold (build AI), resulting in clogged rivers and trampling each other.
A master strategist like Sam Altman has long foreseen this day. Instead of rushing into the river, he set up a toll booth at the only outlet—World. Want to cross? Want to export your gold? Pay a fee first. This strategic foresight is World’s true moat. It’s not just an identity verification tool; it’s the “customs” of the future AI era, holding the passport to the real world.

The Business of the Metal Sphere and Utopia
Many still see World as just “selling iris scans for a few tokens,” but that’s a superficial misunderstanding. World’s core technology—Zero-Knowledge Proof—is more like showing your ID at a bar late at night. The bouncer only scans to confirm you’re an adult but doesn’t know your name, address, or age. World aims to let you prove to the world, without revealing any privacy, that you are a unique human being.
Imagine a future scenario: ChatGPT might be deeply integrated with World ID. Want to pay with cryptocurrency? Subscribe to premium services? Or even find a genuine, scam-free romantic partner online? First, verify your World ID. This isn’t just tech integration; it’s the formation of a business cycle.
World is even planning to embed this system into dating apps like Tinder or gaming hardware from Razer. When you’re grinding for gear in a game, you won’t have to worry about dozens of scripts or bots competing with you, because behind every opponent is a real, iris-verified human.
A grander narrative involves “Universal Basic Income” (UBI). Sam Altman has been advocating that AI will eventually take over most human jobs, and the profits generated by AI should be shared with all humanity. The question is: how to distribute? To whom? How to prevent someone from registering thousands of accounts to claim the dividends? World is that payout wallet. As long as you prove you’re human, the dividends from AI’s prosperity—distributed via WLD tokens—will flow to you. It sounds utopian, but logically, it’s astonishingly self-consistent: create a problem (AI replacing humans), then sell a solution (distributing money to humans through World).

Evolution of ID 4.0: A Digital Masquerade Ball
To make this grand story more credible, World is rapidly iterating its technology to address public concerns. The latest ID 4.0 introduces the so-called OPRF nodes, whose technical documentation can be dizzying, but we can understand it with a vivid analogy. Imagine attending an endless masquerade ball. In the old system, you wear the same mask in every room (app login). Clever people can link your behavior across rooms by following that mask, guessing who you are. OPRF technology is like a magical changing room: when you leave the “social network” room and enter the “financial payment” room, the system instantly swaps your mask for a completely different one. This means your identity as a “tiger” on site A becomes a “rabbit” on site B, with no connection between the two masks. Even if hackers break into site A and steal the “tiger” mask, they won’t know it’s you as the “rabbit” on site B, let alone reconstruct your real face. This is the ultimate “unlinkability,” a digital disguise that leaves surveillance impossible.
Additionally, the new version finally loosens the “must-have that ball” restriction. Support for passport verification and multi-device cloud login makes World evolve from a geek toy into a foundational infrastructure similar to Google accounts. If this system truly rolls out by 2026, it might no longer be just a blockchain project but a universal credential in the digital world, like your phone number.

The Sword of Damocles: Regulatory Crackdown
However, behind every beautiful narrative lurks a shadow. The global regulatory crackdown on World is not just “communication issues” as the project claims but a life-and-death legal battle. Let’s look at the brutal situation in Europe. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) issued an order demanding World immediately stop collecting data in the country.
The reason is very strict: they found minors scanning their irises for a few dozen euros worth of tokens. In privacy-obsessed Europe, touching minors’ data is akin to pressing the nuclear button. This forced World to suspend its “payout” activities in Spain and face hefty fines. It’s not just about losing a market; it sets a dangerous precedent—if the EU deems biometric data collection illegal, the entire GDPR-covered region will shut its doors to World.
The scene in Africa is even more surreal. Kenyan authorities raided World’s warehouse, confiscated the silver metal spheres (Orbs), and took the responsible personnel for questioning. The Kenyan government’s concern is straightforward: a US company with a handful of tokens wants to take biometric data from millions of its citizens? That’s a matter of national data sovereignty. Accusations of “digital colonialism” are among the hardest to clear for World.
Sam Altman is trying to handle all this through open-source tech and lobbying in Washington, but in privacy-centric Europe and emerging markets with rising sovereignty awareness, it’s a race between a tech fanatic and the state machinery. Lose, and World becomes a banned illegal biometric database, with those metal spheres turned to scrap; win, and it becomes a global digital passport.

The Brutal Tokenomics: When Will This Bomb Explode?
Now, a cold shower for all the hot-blooded readers eager to buy the dip: despite the grand narrative and seductive logic, WLD’s tokenomics is a carefully crafted trap designed for harvesting. Although WLD surged 18% yesterday, it’s still nearly 95% below its all-time high. Why? Because its “circulating supply” is extremely bizarre. World’s total token supply is 10 billion, but only a tiny fraction is actually in circulation. What does that mean? It’s a “high-inflation” monster. Every day, as more people scan their irises, new WLD tokens are “printed” and distributed to users.
It’s like a central bank printing money madly—unless new buying power enters at the same frantic pace, the token’s price will inevitably decline due to dilution. Even scarier are the token unlocks for VC investors and the team. It’s like a ticking time bomb hanging over retail investors’ heads. These early low-cost tokens will be unlocked in waves, flooding the market with billions of WLD.
Who can absorb this billions of dollars’ worth of selling pressure? The current rally is mostly driven by speculation about “OpenAI possibly partnering.” If OpenAI officially announces integration with World, the price could skyrocket; but if it’s just a rumor or unlocks flood in, today’s gains could vanish tomorrow, even breaking the floor.
Understanding Sam Altman’s grand chess game isn’t about blindly rushing in as a bagholder but about grasping the underlying rules of the future world. In this AI-saturated era, your identity as a “real person” is shifting from an assumed attribute to a tradable, quantifiable scarce asset.
As for the WLD token, it’s more like a “lottery ticket” to this new world than a stable investment. If you choose to participate, remember this: in World’s grand blueprint, you are a “mining machine” providing biometric data, and a “fuel” maintaining network effects. Unless you are very clear about what you’re doing, don’t blindly bet your hard-earned money on a utopian dream that could be shut down by regulation or diluted into nothingness. In this wild west world, watching the show is fine, but going too deep often comes with a price.