Worldcoin token drops 5% amid Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI

Quick Take

The price of Worldcoin’s WLD token dropped about 5% amid news that Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Worldcoin’s WLD token has emerged as a proxy bet on OpenAI in the crypto markets.

The price of Worldcoin’s WLD token dropped approximately 5% over the past 24 hours amid news that Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman — who also co-created Worldcoin and remains a board member — for allegedly breaching contractual agreements made in 2015.

Musk, the enigmatic leader of Tesla and SpaceX, co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before stepping down from its board in 2018.

The lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco, claims OpenAI’s profit-oriented focus violates the aforementioned contractual agreements, as the company’s efforts to allegedly keep the design of GPT-4 “a complete secret,” Reuters reported.

Worldcoin’s WLD token has proven to be a proxy bet on OpenAI in the crypto markets, often experiencing volatility when Altman or OpenAI are in the news, despite not being inherently related. While WLD has declined by about 5%, the wider cryptocurrency market capitalization has declined by just less than 1.5% over the same timeframe.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.