Kalam Crypto #82: All Eyes on Worldcoin & Stablecoin Clarity in the U.S.

This week, a new project wants to scan your eyes and give you some crypto, stablecoin clarity bill passes in the U.S. and Chainlink launch their cross-chain interoperability protocol.

31 Jul, 2023

CoinMENA Team

Author

"There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool." Marguerite de Valois

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 82nd edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, a new project wants to scan your eyes and give you some crypto, stablecoin clarity bill passes in the U.S. and Chainlink launch their cross-chain interoperability protocol. All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto:

Prefer to listen to Kalam Crypto instead? Check out our podcast:

Global News 🌍

Stablecoin Clarity in The U.S.: The House Financial Services Committee successfully passed the “Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act” with bipartisan backing. The bill grants state legislators the authority to license payment stablecoin issuers, while also incorporating federal policies. More importantly, it provides much-needed clarity for market participants and companies.

Chainlink Aims to Bring Trillions from Banks Into Crypto: Chainlink recently launched its cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP), aiming to facilitate token transfers between blockchains. Leveraging the Chainlink network's established reliability in supplying real-world data to blockchains, the protocol serves as a technical infrastructure for cross-chain token movements.

Keep an eye on 👀

WorldCoin, Orbs & Iris Scanning: Science fiction is now a reality. A recently launched project, WorldCoin, aims to distribute a token (WLD) as universal basic income (UBI) to every individual worldwide. To receive the UBI, users must verify their uniqueness through biometric eye scans using WorldCoin's orbs. According to CEO Sam Altman, who is also the CEO of Open AI, their goal is simply “a global financial and identity network based on proof of personhood. This feels especially important in the AI era.”

However, the project faces criticism from the crypto community, firstly concerning privacy implications. Allowing a private company to collect and link retinal data to financial transactions raises dystopian science fiction-like concerns. Secondly, concerns are raised about the tokenomics, with 25% of tokens allocated to VCs, developers, and reserve funds. The list of investors includes notable crypto VC firms like a16z, as well as disgraced crypto figures and companies like SBF, and Three Arrows Capital.

Thirdly, the inflated market value. The current price of the token WLD is ~$2.3 with a market capitalization of $270 million. However, the circulating supply is currently equal to only 1% of the 10 billion max supply of WLD tokens to be issued. Meaning the fully diluted market cap of WLD is ~24 billion dollars, which would place it as the 7th largest cryptocurrency in the world.

Despite privacy concerns, questionable tokenomics, and inflated value, over 2 million people have scanned their eyeballs so far. Will you be one of them? At this point, we have a lot of questions, but we will definitely keep an eye on it, figuratively of course!

Blog of The Week ✍️

Check out our Managing Director Dina Sam’an’s blog about the latest U.S. Court's Ruling on XRP, and What it means for Crypto.

Class of the Week 🎓

We launched our free learning platform, CoinMENA University, because crypto education is a key pillar for us at CoinMENA. Each week we will include one article for you to explore, or deepen your understanding of the topic. We hope you find this useful! Today’s article is in response to a poll showing MENA investment professionals and economists are in favor of CBDCs. This article titled “CBDC Are Not Cryptocurrencies”, highlights the important differences between them.

Tweet Of The Week 🐥

He did it, he X’s the bird. Shall we rename this section?

CoinMENA News 🗞

🎁New 500 XRP Giveaway🎁: We’re giving away 500 XRP this month to 2 users (250 XRP each)! To qualify, simply verify your CoinMENA account before 10 August and you could be one of our 2 winners! If you already have a verified account, invite your friends using your referral link, and you can both earn extra rewards when they verify their account.

Quiz Corner ✅

Last week’s question: Who invented Ripple?

Answer: Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb

This week’s question: When was Ethereum invented?