The World Foundation, the organization behind the controversial biometric identity project Worldcoin, has executed a significant token sale at a steep discount, intensifying existing market and regulatory pressures on its WLD token.
Major Discounted Sale Completed Amidst Price Decline
On March 28, 2026, the World Foundation announced that its token issuance arm, World Assets, Ltd., had completed over-the-counter (OTC) sales of WLD tokens totaling $65 million to four counterparties. The first transaction settled on March 20, 2026, with the entire block sold at an average price of approximately $0.2719 per token.
This price represents a staggering 76% decline from the roughly $1.13 per token price achieved during a $135 million funding round in May 2024, which featured prominent investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Crypto. The foundation stated the proceeds are earmarked for core operations, research and development, orb manufacturing, and ecosystem development.
Critically, only $25 million worth of the tokens sold are subject to a six-month lockup period. The remaining $40 million worth were immediately available for trading, allowing buyers to sell into the open market without restriction. The news coincided with WLD briefly hitting an all-time low of $0.24 before a modest recovery. At the time of writing, WLD was trading near $0.2725, according to Coingecko data—a price that sits roughly 97% below its historical peak of $11.82 recorded in March 2024.
An Imminent Wave of Supply
The market’s negative reaction is compounded by an impending, massive token unlock. Data from DeFiLlama indicates that a community token unlock event is scheduled for July 23, 2026. This event will release approximately 52% of WLD’s total 10 billion token supply, flooding the market with new sellable tokens at a time when the price is already severely depressed. Such large-scale vesting events typically create significant downward price pressure due to the sudden increase in liquid supply.
Persistent and Expanding Regulatory Headwinds
The financial pressure arrives against a backdrop of escalating global regulatory scrutiny. The project’s use of iris-scanning “orbs” to verify human uniqueness has drawn official attention and sanctions in numerous jurisdictions.
In October 2025, Thai authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau, raided an iris-scanning site linked to the World project, alleging it operated without a required license and leading to arrests. This action was followed by Indonesia suspending World ID registrations over compliance concerns, Brazil banning the platform’s eye-scanning operations, Germany opening an inquiry, and Kenya raising strong data privacy objections.
This multi-front regulatory assault directly challenges the project’s core operational model and user acquisition, creating a sustained overhang on the token’s value proposition. The combination of a fire sale of treasury tokens, a looming massive supply release, and a deteriorating regulatory landscape presents a formidable set of challenges for the WLD token and the World ecosystem.
Featured image from Pixabay. Token price and unlock data sourced from public blockchain analytics platforms including Coingecko and DeFiLlama. Regulatory actions referenced from official statements and reports by securities commissions and cyber crime bureaus in Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Germany, and Kenya.
