Worldcoin — a new financial system connected to sensitive biometric information, mostly harvested from poor people — sure sounds like a terrible idea.

• In fact, following Worldcoin’s rollout, people started selling World IDs for as little as $30… So anyone with more than $30 on hand can command more than one digital identity.

The company will need to assemble a vast database of iris data.

• In the bootstrapping phase, at least, you had to pay people to scan their eyes. And so Worldcoin turned to the global south — home to the cheapest eyeballs — and played a dark game of ‘what will people do for money?’

Click here to continue reading.