Worldcoin launches soon, or already launched, evidently, based on all the news blurbs (like this one) I've seen the past two days. At first, I didn't quite understand this Worldcoin chatter.

Pretty sure I've got this thing figured out now (and it's really not that hard to figure). Some quick thoughts...

Yet another coin A new cryptocurrency is hardly news. So, why some buzz on this one? Seems pretty clear the buzz stems from (1) the buzzword du jour, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and (2) the weird orb thing being hauled around the globe.

Really, that's it.

Talk of AI has already made me grow numb on the topic. The trope has quickly grown trite, and it is this: man makes AI, AI grows and learns, AI gains the ability to alter itself, thus replacing man's utility, mankind gets overtaken by AI. Yes, we've all seen that movie before. Movies. Yawn.

But, since Worldcoin is battling this supposedly inevitable slippery slope, it's in the news. Yawn.

The weapon to combat AI, evidently, is biometrics. The Worldcoin folks are relying on iris scans (at first I thought it was retinal scans, but I think it's iris now) to prove who's human and who's not...to separate the humans from the AIs, the wheat from the chaff.

It's unclear to me why, if the AI bots will be so much smarter and superior to us, why couldn't they just come up with an anti-iris scan device or system? Or, just hack the orb?

To get these scans, Worldcoin made an iris scanner, naturally. In the Coindesk article linked at the top, they swore they really, really didn't want to do this type of thing because of the creepy factor. But...there was no other way. You don't want to have to drive a wooden stake through Dracula's heart, but that's the only way. So, despite their deep reluctance to go the iris scan route due to its creepiness...

...they made the most creepy iris scanner they could conjure.

It checks every box on the creepy checklist. First, it's a orb. Even the word is creepy. Secondly, it's mirrored. So, being a mirrored sphere, as you walk up to it, the reflection of you and of all the surroundings are drawn into it as though it's sucking the life-soul of the world into its self. Worldcoin. Third, you must stare into it. Staring is creepy in its own right. Fourth, as if staring into a iris scanner wasn't bad enough, the thing is specifically designed to look like an eyeball staring back at you! That is truly next-level creepiness! Fifth, the orb is angled at 23.5 degrees, the same tilt as the Earth! (Are you serious?! Is this a joke and we're just being punked? I'm picturing a group of guys and gals sitting around drinking and smoking weed and saying, "Yeah, yeah, and...let's make it look like the Sputnik, like Hal from 2001! Heh! Heh!") Sixth, just as it's drawing life-source into its mirrored, spherical walls, the eyeball literally stares back into you. It looks into your eyes to record your iris.

I do not think it blinks, so you will lose the stare-down as it scans your iris. Your soul.

For a group that suggest they really, really, really didn't want to go the biometric scan route, they sure seem to have gone out of their way to make it unnerving.

If we could set aside the AI talk and creepy orb talk for a moment (hard to do, and undoubtedly the absolute driving force behind the buzz around Worldcoin), let's look at more of the tokenomics and culture of Worldcoin. Surrounding Worldcoin is a lot of talk about Universal Basic Income (UBI).

UBI is a feel-good, do-good movement that holds this premise: if you are human, you deserve free money to sustain your life. Undergirding UBI proponents' thoughts is the notion that life is not fair and that some people get more of the good stuff than others. Effort, work, or any other factor aside, that's not fairTM. So, in the name of fairness, everyone should get a basic income because they have human DNA and breathe oxygen.

And, best yet, it's free! The WLD coin/money just comes to you, from nowhere. I couldn't find the actual tokenomics, the emission/distribution or inflation of WLD as it's not front-and-center on their website. That's evidently not important. Milton Friedman was wrong about TINSTAAFL, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

And, oh, back to AI for a second...Worldcoin feels that once the AI bots take over, we humans will still have a place. And, actually, it's good news. The logic is this...AI bots, being far smarter than us, will do things so much better, more efficiently and effectively, and just better than us, that productivity will skyrocket. The pie graph will get much, much bigger. That's good. And then, since we're human and have proven that, portions of the Worldcoin coin (WLD) will be distributed to we humans as UBI.

Hence, to get your WLD in the post-human/AI run world, one must scan her or his iris to prove you're a human and get your UBI.

It' unclear to me why these super smart AI bots are bothering to do their super smart work for us just so that we can collect UBI. You'd think they'd just brush us aside, or put us to work for them and give us only a basic, basic sustenance...just enough to sustain our life so we can do whatever work they want us to do for them.

That's a rather grim outlook. I prefer Worldcoin's utopian vision: bots do the smart work, we get free money.

So, what we have here is this. Worldcoin is a make-a-better-world minded project to save humanity via "combatting" AI from taking over and to make the world a fair place by distributing Universal Basic Income to people. For free.

And, oh, it's run by a 29 year old C.E.O. Do we know of any other 20-30 year olds running crypto projects who are fueled by the intent to make the world more fair for humanity?