World = humanity’s biggest asymmetric bet (or: Why I’m aping pump.fun-style poopcoins on Worldchain)

If AGI truly disrupts the knowledge work economy, World's ongoing UBI payments (currently reaching 10 million people a month) could offer humanity a path forward.

Jan 16, 2025

The eye-scanning orb maketh me ill. It unsettles me so. But that doesn’t matter, dear. Some deeper part of me – the rational, alligator-eyed part – sees Worldchain and its ever-growing universe of apps and memecoins as the biggest asymmetric bet in investing (and you’re not required to get your eyeball scanned to get involved).

Here’s my retardio bull case (and why I’m buying WLD and pump.fun-style memecoins like “IRON SAM” in the ecosystem)...

1. OpenAI has unlocked “Artificial General Intelligence” or “AGI” per Sam Altman’s latest blog post. 2025 is the year when AI enters the workforce as agents in a serious way.

2. Employers can hire messy, complicated humans (for thousands of $$$ a month) or pay a few hundos to deploy an agent – one that lacks emotional problems and health insurance – instead. Pretty obvious which option employers are going to choose.

3. Knowledge worker hiring stalls globally and existential crises emerge (both psychological and monetary).

4. Knowledge work disappears. Economy fractures. Ravens caw. And a superclass of once-highly-paid, highly-ambitious humans morphs from societal positive to net drag.

5. Meanwhile, OpenAI plows ahead on “superintelligence" (i.e. intelligence smarter than the collective wisdom of every human on earth). Each release means more economic rektage... even as tech breakthroughs accelerate.

6. Economy is reduced to rubble & ash. Hardcore reckoning. Govts forced to deploy monthly stipends for their broken citizens (aka “Universal Basic Income” or UBI). Unfortunately, most govts are overly indebted. Stimmies can only be sustained w moneyprinting. Hyperinflation looms.

7. In face of spiraling, runaway inflation, humanity requires a backstop… Enter Worldcoin (WLD) – the very token running on top of the blockchain that was co-founded by Sam Altman six years ago! The USP? FREE MONEY, BOIIZZZ!!!! MONEY THAT WON'T HYPERINFLATE. You just need to gaze into this powerful eyeball-scanning orb to prove your account was generated by a human, and we will transfer value to you monthly.

8. Humans around the globe login to World app monthly to claim their stipends ("Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up -- it's the first of the month"). Then, they get busy figuring out the meaning of life in a post-work world.

Random thoughts on the ideas above (and on World's future)

9. That future 👆 is obviously hypothetical. Perhaps the outcome is unlikely, but elements of it feel inevitable.

10. Crypto Twitter hammers Worldcoin for being a “low-float, high-FDV VC" coin while ignoring the fact that UBI has to come from somewhere. ("That extra float will buy you cricket protein during the Dust Bowl of 2028, my child!")

11. Based on public comments, Altman appears quite involved in the Worldcoin eco. That makes me believe Worldchain will be the first blockchain-based home for ChatGPT’s agents. In other words, World could become the financial rails for AGI and superintelligence. It could be the bridge bw humankind & machines.

12. Worldcoin’s userbase is unlike anything else in crypto. There are no orbs in the US yet, so the chain’s initial 22 million users are spread across other countries. Many users = unbanked (the very people crypto OGs wanted to reach in the first place!).

13. One way of thinking of World is as its own human-centric internet. So maybe the current web gets overrun w agents, but World become a “carbon-based internet” purpose-built for humankind.

14. We’ve entered the “Exponential Age.” Technological progress begets progress until the pace of change = utterly bewildering. Rapid change means YOU SHALL be repulsed by changes. Put another way: where we’re headed, ALL of us will experience psychological discomfort regularly. Tech doesn't care if we can handle it or not, and World’s eye-scanning orb is just one of those discomforting changes. Perhaps it repulses you (makes you want to curl into a ball), but 10 million+ other people don't seem to care. And I imagine we’ll think about eye scans as much as we think about the face scans we use to unlock our phones (which is to say, hardly ever).

World’s architecture

15. When you're looking at stats in the World app, they call their users "humans." It's a stark reminder of just how unique and powerful this platform could become. Agents are rising everywhere else and clogging up social networks. Only Worldchain is positioned to distinguish between humans/AIs. And that's got some cool immediate use cases like provably fair airdrops (i.e. 1 human = 1 recurring airdrop).

16. Worldcoin is the first blockchain that solves the sybil attack problem… and you can extend that functionality to other places on the internet (i.e. you can already log into the World discord group with your World ID… then, your account gets a special tag verifiably identifying you as hooooman).

(This inverts the current standard where we assume users are human in the absence of contradictory information. A few years from now, we’ll likely assume users are AI until proven otherwise).

17. Key elements in the World stack 👇

The rise of the human-centric internet and World “mini apps”

18. Out of everything in the chart above, it’s the Mini Apps that I’m most bullish on. Once you have the World app installed on your phone, you can access the Mini App store inside the wallet. Then, you can download apps like arcade games, memecoin apps, airdrop apps, social apps, etc.

19. Accessing and using mini apps DOES NOT require having your eyeball scanned by the orb. You may have limited access to some functionality without a scan, but most functionality is possible. Example: there are mini apps that airdrop tokens to users who login daily. All the mini apps I’ve seen ONLY give airdrops to people who have been scanned. However, once the tokens are liquid, anyone can trade them. (Makes sense tbh… bc it prevents airdrops from being gamed).

20. Mini apps launched about 3 months ago. 80+ are live and they’ve had more than 5.9 billion views! Altogether, users in 160 countries have interacted with at least 1 app.

21. With those stats, you could argue that World is the most successful ecosystem in crypto rn. Mini Apps have 2.3 million DAILY active users after going live less than 3 months ago! Compare that to the entire Solana blockchain, which has about 4.6 million DAILY active addresses (many of which are sybils).

22. About half of the 20 million users who have downloaded the World app have had their eyeballs scanned. So there are 10 million verified users in the ecosystem. That number is growing by 80,000+ every day.

Why I’m exploring the Worldcoin trenches

23. If World achieves its vision, WLD itself could become one of the industry’s most important tokens… easily a Top 3 coin. World’s market cap is currently $1.8 billion. Today’s No. 3 blockchain, XRP, is worth 85x more at $153 billion.

24. WLD’s tokenomics are hard to parse, though… demand for WLD must exceed the increase in circulating supply in order for the price to rise (and supply will increase faster as World attracts more users/UBI recipients). So what they need is an absolute explosion in use-cases for WLD itself (i.e. LPing in liquidity pools, staking in farms, etc.). Not impossible at all, but not easy.

25. If World succeeds, value won’t accrue exclusively to WLD, of course… it will accrue to tokens issued on top of Worldchain, too. That’s why I’ve focused some investment energy (specifically on altcoins inside the World app).

What excites me about World-based altcoins

26. I'm bullish on World’s mini apps… These are the micro apps inside World’s main “wallet” app. This is where you can find things like memecoin launchpads, arcade games, social apps, defi, etc. There are 80+ apps so far including some where I’ve bought fun memecoins like "IRON SAM", "ORB”, "MILEI" and "TRUMP".

27. The World app is like an ATM spitting money out for its users… If you prove your humanity by scanning your eyeball, you’re then entitled to UBI. That means, every month, you can login to the app and claim more WLD.

28. I haven’t been able to nail down the exact amount of WLD UBI payments, but it seems to be around 5 or 6 WLD per month. That doesn’t sound like much if you live in the U.S. or E.U., but keep in mind, World users live in more than 160 countries around the world (and each has unique standards of living).

29. On top of the WLD UBI payment, World users can also download other apps that are giving away free tokens. Many of the other apps give away tokens daily instead of monthly (i.e. ORB and ORO). That means users are incentivized to open the World app and the mini apps inside it every day to claim their free money.

30. Users can opt to cash out those free tokens, or they can do what us degens are naturally inclined to do: roll it into other investment opportunities that could grow their stashes exponentially. That’s why I’m so bullish World memecoins… users are getting free WLD (and potentially dozens of other altcoins), which they can invest in alts. This is just like the “wealth effect” we see on other crypto chains (i.e. many users who got the Jito airdrop sold their tokens to buy memecoins on Solana).

31. World’s distribution is insane. Already, the biggest altcoin I've found on Worldchain, ORO, has more on-chain holders (1.12 million) than BONK (879,000)! Market caps are far lower, of course, bc the lifetime value of a Worldcoin user is far lower (for now) than a Solana user. Its userbase is normies… not crypto rich. A single breakout app could change that overnight.

32. Memecoining within the world app is barely a week old. The Poop app, for example, lets you launch and trade memecoins. Its already seen more than 1,000 coins launch. Interestingly, only people who have had their eyeballs scanned can launch coins, but anyone with the World app can trade them.

33. The mini app ecosystem is so nascent that the market caps on these alts are obscenely low… Some have FDVs around $500! Lol. The biggest alts in the Poop app have MCs of around $7,000! That means you don’t need to invest tons of capital to get exposure (and you shouldn’t be doing that anyway). Buying anything more than 5% of a token’s supply is way too aggressive and could inhibit the ecosystem’s growth. If you don’t leave space in the boat for others, you’re going to die alone. Leave space, and let the rising tide lift you all.

Getting started with the “Pump.fun’s” of Worldchain

34. Go to world.org and click "get world app" to download the app to your phone.

35. Set up your World ID without scanning your eyeball... this will create a Worldchain address for you within the app.

36. Send a tiny test amount of WLD or USDC.e from OPTIMISM to your Worldcoin address (you can do it via Metamask or wherever). Or bridge in ETH from mainnet on across.to, or from Optimism with owlto.finance. You’ll want WLD if you plan to trade on the Poop app (see No. 37 below). I also hear Uniswap Wallet works great as a bridge (haven't tried it myself).

37. Once funds arrive, you can download some of the mini apps in World to begin swapping shitters. Some of my favorite mini apps so far:

Poop (@pooplaunch), which has seen hundreds of memecoins launch daily over the past few days. They’re about to pass 1,000 memecoins including some I’m long like Sam (SAM), Iron Sam (SAMA) and Skynet (SKY):
https://world.org/ecosystem/app_15daccf5b7d4ec9b7dbba044a8fdeab5
Uno (@uno_wallet), which operates a dex for leading tokens like Orb (OBR), Oro (ORO) and CORAZON:
https://world.org/ecosystem/app_a4f7f3e62c1de0b9490a5260cb390b56
Meme Factory, which is a memecoin app that is currently live with 7 coins including TRUMP, HUMAN, MILEI and JESUS:
https://world.org/ecosystem/app_013bbbd7b5803a25c8d10d10299608e7

Closing thoughts

38. Worldchain feels like a parallel economic universe. Crypto OGs hate it due to the orb (even though most of them probably already scan their faces or fingerprints for their phones and laptops). Meanwhile, World is quietly becoming the largest ecosystem the industry’s ever seen. As orbs propagate to more cities, those numbers will grow even faster. The only question then = can Worldcoin make its Mini App ecosystem exciting enough? Or will people simply login to trade their WLD for cash then disappear? It’s the trillion dollar question.

39. Obviously, this piece isn’t financial advice. Don’t go ape these memecoins with your grandma’s retirement funds. There’s a strong possibility you could lose 100% of your funds. But that’s the very nature of asymmetric bets. Dumping $10 into a tiny shitcoin today means your total potential loss is $10. If Worldcoin truly becomes humanity’s premiere UBI platform, that shitcoin could be worth far more than your initial investment. That said, I’ve taken similar swings in the past and lost everything (on Tezos for instance and in the Polkadot ecosystems). No guarantees here, anons. It’s ride or die.

40. I choose ride.

Redphonecrypto

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