Worldcoin Dumps $65M of WLD at 97% Discount, Orb Production Requires Actual Sacrifices

The World Foundation has completed a $65 million over-the-counter token sale, moving approximately 239 million WLD to four private counterparties over the past week. First settlements began March 20, with transactions priced at an average of $0.2719 per token. For those keeping score at home, that's basically WLD at a price that would make a bankruptcy filing look optimistic.

According to a March 28 statement, the capital will fund core operations including research and development, ecosystem expansion, and continued manufacturing of the project's proprietary iris-scanning hardware known as Orbs. The Orbs live on, it seems, because someone's still out there willingly scanning eyeballs for tokens in exchange for making Sam Altman everyone's biometric overlord.

To soften the secondary-market impact, $25 million worth of the sold tokens are subject to a six-month lockup, keeping them out of circulation until late September. A generous gesture, truly—it's almost like they're saying "please don't panic sell immediately, we promise we'll let you panic sell in Q4 instead."

The sale comes as WLD continues to hemorrhage value. Following the announcement, the token briefly plunged to an all-time low around $0.24 before recovering to approximately $0.27—still down about 97% from its March 2024 peak near $11.82. To put that in perspective, WLD's price action makes most rug pulls look like steady blue-chip performances.

The OTC sale represents a steep discount compared to previous rounds. In May last year, World raised $135 million at roughly $1.13 per token from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Crypto. Those investors are now sitting on a portfolio that makes their other bets look like generational wealth generators by comparison.

Additional supply pressure looms. A major community token unlock is scheduled for July 23, covering roughly