Worldcoin Falls as Elon Musk Sues Sam Altman, OpenAI

Worldcoin is an ambitious project led by Sam Altman and OpenAI. The futuristic project is using eye-scanning technology to verify identities, and uses blockchain technology to store and process data. With backing from Microsoft, many are hoping to see a large-scale roll out of the project. However, recent news about a lawsuit between OpenAI and Elon Musk may dampen those hopes.

Musk is a serial entrepreneur, currently serving as the CEO of Tesla among other duties. However, he was a co-founder of OpenAI back in 2015 with current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Musk has since gone to start his own AI company, called xAI, and has shown some opposition to OpenAI since. 

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The lawsuit is in regards to alleged contractual agreements between Musk and Altman made in 2015 surrounding the future of the company. In particular, Musk believes that OpenAI has abandoned its goal to "benefit humanity", and is instead heavily focused on profits. 

Musk claims that OpenAI went to great lengths to keep GPT-4, OpenAI's strongest generative AI yet, a "complete secret". Additionally, OpenAI charges for use of GPT-4, having users purchase a $20/month subscription in order to access it. 

The exact monetary amount in the lawsuit is still unknown, but it is likely a sizable amount, given OpenAI's extreme growth as well as the size of its main backer, Microsoft. 

All of this news has negatively impacted Worldcoin, which has essentially served as a crypto-proxy for investing in OpenAI and Sam Altman. 

Overnight, the price of Worldcoin (WLD) fell nearly 15%, going from $8.38 to a low of $7.20. While the price did recover a bit and is currently trading around the $8 level, the news certainly caused some to sell. 

While the lawsuit is certainly a roadblock for OpenAI, the company, along with Worldcoin, have performed extremely well over the past month. In February, OpenAI showcased its generative video AI, called Sora. The technology was highly anticipated and was shown much sooner than most experts expected. In fact, the news caused WLD to spike more than 200% in a matter of days. 

So, the current downturn from the lawsuit is very small compared to the massive run up that WLD has had in the past weeks, potentially showing how bullish investors are on the promising technology. However, the lawsuit was just filed, so details are sparse. As more information comes out, WLD will likely adjust accordingly. 

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