Sam Altman’s OpenAI ouster sees rollercoaster Worldcoin price

Sam Altman’s eye-scanning world ID project saw its token price go on a wild ride over the weekend after he was fired by OpenAI.

Worldcoin (WLD), the token of Sam Altman’s retina-scanning project of the same name, saw major volatility over the past few days as he was ousted from OpenAI and reported to be in talks to make a return before finally being replaced.

WLD saw a Nov. 16 high of $2.48 before starting a slide that accelerated after Altman was outed by OpenAI late on Nov. 17 in the United States, which saw it drop to a low of nearly $1.84, according to CoinGecko data.

It bounced back, surging 12% over the past 24 hours to reach an intraday high of $2.54 during Monday morning Asian trading, then again dropped to $2.30 after Altman was replaced as CEO by Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear.

*Seven-day WLD price. Source: CoinGecko*

Altman co-founded Worldcoin, which launched in July. While the project is separate from OpenAI, WLD’s initial rebound came after reported efforts by a group of OpenAI executives and investors to reinstate Altman as CEO of the artificial intelligence firm.

Worldcoin is a digital identity platform with ambitions to build a world-wide ID and financial system using retina scanning technology to authenticate humans amid a rise in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Worldcoin’s launch polarized the crypto community, which raised questions about its centralization, privacy and security.

AI-related crypto assets have been outperforming over the past 24 hours, with the market capitalization of AI-related tokens notching a 7.2% rise to $6.5 billion, with tokens such as Fetch.ai (FET), SingularityNET (AGIX) and Akash Network (AKT) notching double-digit gains, according to CoinGecko.

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