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Worldcoin’s Rocketing WLD Token Could Benefit Creditors of Three Arrows Capital, FTX

However, WLD prices may run into headwinds as a token unlock worth $165 million is set to begin today, occurring until Feb.26, data from Token Unlocks show.

Updated Apr 14, 2024, 10:25 p.m. Published Feb 19, 2024, 11:44 a.m.
The worldcoin orb. (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)
The worldcoin orb. (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)
  • Three Arrows participated in a $25 million round at a $1 billion valuation for Worldcoin’s developer Tools For Humanity. FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was an early investor as well.
  • However, WLD prices may run into headwinds as a token unlock worth $165 million is set to begin on Monday.

An over 200% surge in Worldcoin’s WLD tokens in the past week is seemingly benefiting a key group of investors – creditors of the bankrupt fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), 3AC founder Su Zhu said on X on Monday.

However, WLD prices may run into headwinds as a token unlock worth $165 million is set to begin this week, ending on Feb.26, data from Token Unlocks show.

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“I won’t be benefiting from WLD outperformance, but I'm glad 3AC creditors have one of the largest positions in WLD in the world,” Zhu said. “Got hated on a lot for this worldcoin investment in 2021.”

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Worldcoin is a controversial project that wants to scan everyone’s eyes in exchange for a digital ID and tokens. Every person receives depends on how early in the project’s roll-out they got involved and is distributed over two years, with 10% available immediately in a wallet app generated by the Orb.

3AC participated in a $25 million round for Worldcoin’s developer Tools For Humanity, which valued the firm at a $1 billion valuation, data from funding tracker Dealroom shows. The firm’s exact WLD holdings are unknown, and its founders owe creditors over $1.5 billion from investment losses, as per court filings.

Another creditor group that could likely benefit is the FTX estate. In its Series A in October 2021, Worldcoin also received investment from Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and CEO of crypto exchange FTX, which has since gone bankrupt with Bankman-Fried facing allegations of fraud.

Data tracked by SpotOnChain shows wallets linked to Bankman-Fried’s company received over $185 million worth of WLD tokens in August 2023. The same Worldcoin address also sent tokens worth between $35 million to $170 million to several other addresses in the same month, blockchain transactional history shows.

WLD’s rise has apparently come after AI developer OpenAI’s launch of a text-to-video generator, Sora, last week. Worldcoin’s parent company and OpenAI share the same founder, Sam Altman, and crypto traders are likely considering WLD a bet on the latter’s successes.

The token’s nearly 50% jump in the past 24 hours has propelled prices to all-time highs of over $7 as of Monday, giving Worldcoin a full diluted valuation of a mammoth $75 billion.

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At launch and for 15 years, a total of 10 billion WLD will be released to the market. Tokens allotted to investors and the development team were locked for a year.

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