Stack disruption: Worldcoin’s standards for the world

Converging digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, are challenging seemingly settled standards of trust, privacy, and identity within global finance. This article examines how financial technology (fintech) firms are disrupting established norms of financial governance by circumventing traditional actors, especially banks, through the case of World, an OpenAI-affiliated ‘proof of personhood’ initiative co-founded by Sam Altman. Headquartered in San Francisco, World provides digital passports and cryptocurrency (Worldcoin) in exchange for biometric data. Built to address challenges of human identification in the era of AI, World reconfigures informational governance and marginalises conventional authorities. We argue that World contributes to wider, ongoing disruption of longstanding conventions of trust and privacy in financial governance. World separates users from the fiduciary roles traditionally held by banks and governments, mediating value and identity with minimal oversight and increased risks for individuals. Rather than representing a peripheral experiment, World demonstrates how AI and blockchain technologies are contributing to attempts at redefining the boundaries between finance, data, and identity. This case highlights how fintech disruption not only challenges regulatory frameworks but also redefines the standards of trust and privacy that structure the contemporary political economy.