World —formerly Worldcoin— is now officially operating in six American cities, marking its first official U.S. rollout after years of avoiding domestic exposure over regulatory risk.
The company announced on April 30 that its Orb-based identity verification system is now live in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco, stating:
Americans can now verify their World ID beginning in six key innovation hubs (Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco), access the complete World App experience, and claim the Worldcoin (WLD) airdrop. World’s signature NVIDIA-powered Orbs will be available across the USA via standalone World Spaces and partner locations such as Razer stores.
Worldcoin, the Controversial Proyect
The “Orb” is the first token of the World ecosystem, designed by a company called Tools for Humanity. Its function is simple (and somewhat puzzling): to prove you are human through an iris scan.
Simply put, the Orb scans people’s eyes to verify their humanity and gives you an “iris code,” which is a kind of unique digital representation of the iris texture. Despite being alarming, the Orb’s software is open source, allowing the community to see how biometric data is processed.
Despite the open source code, and beyond alliances and rebranding, several countries have already banned or suspended the program due to concerns about privacy and misuse of data.
In June last year, the project had to halt services in Spain and Portugal due to investigations regarding data protection. A few months before, Hong Kong also investigated Worldcoin and reported that the project had violated multiple times the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance (PDPO).
WLD Token Outlook
World claims over 26 million users globally, with 12 million verified via Orb scans.
But adoption hasn’t helped. While the token seems to have been on an upward trend in recent weeks, its peak was USD 11.74 in March 2024, which is a drop of over 90%, data from CoinMarketCap shows.
