Why the Bitcoin and Crypto Communities Are So Skeptical of Worldcoin

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is sponsored by NYDIG. Today’s episode is nominally about Worldcoin. The project launched this week with ambitions to airdrop a new cryptocurrency on everyone in the world. To do so, it’s using biometric eye scanning to identify people and the entire cryptosphere – bitcoiners, ethereans and beyond – are sort of not having it. NLW gives the context and background of Silicon Valley’s history with bitcoin and crypto in order to help explain the reaction to Worldcoin. Featuring Dan Held “Why Silicon Valley Doesn’t Get Bitcoin.” NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1438693620?at=1000lSDb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/538vuul1PuorUDwgkC8JWF?si=ddSvD-HST2e_E7wgxcjtfQ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ubHdjcnlwdG8ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M= Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW “The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Tidal Wave” by BRASKO. Image credit: Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:09.1	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:16.2	The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDes.
0:22.6	What's going on, guys? It is Friday, October 22nd. And today we are talking about one of the most
0:29.2	skepticism-raising announcements that I've seen in some time. I'm speaking, of course, about
0:35.9	WorldCoin. And anyone who spent any time on Bitcoin or
0:39.7	crypto Twitter in the last 24 hours will know that the crypto community, and not just Bitcoiners,
0:45.2	but the crypto community writ large, does not like what they perceive to be a privacy-invasive
0:50.9	Silicon Valley-backed project. I'm going to both try to contextualize those feelings,
0:56.1	as well as give WorldCoyne a fair shake at an analysis from the standpoint of what strikes me as
1:01.8	good, what strikes me as not so good, and what strikes me as just the stakes of how things
1:06.7	happen in fall of 2021. But to start, let's talk about why Bitcoiners in specific, but many people
1:13.7	in the crypto community in general, have some amount of skepticism when it comes to Silicon Valley.
1:18.5	For those of you who don't know, I spent about a decade in Silicon Valley. I worked in startups.
1:22.5	I worked on the venture side. And I was there during the first wave of Silicon Valley's
1:26.8	interest, or at least contact with
1:28.6	Bitcoin. I missed it then, too, so when I talk about Silicon Valley missing it, I'm not holding
1:34.2	myself to a higher standard. Instead, I'm just trying to articulate why I think so many people
1:39.3	missed it. First of all, one obvious one is that Bitcoin didn't have an investable organization, right?
1:45.5	Venture capital is mandated to invest in early stage risky startups.
1:49.9	There wasn't anything that really resemble a startup around Bitcoin.
1:52.6	It was a new type of asset that people weren't exactly sure what it was going to do or what it was going to be for.
	...

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