Wedbush’s Dan Ives Joins Eightco to Lead $250M Worldcoin Strategy

Wall Street tech analyst Dan Ives is joining Eightco Holdings as chairman to lead a $250 million strategy centered on Worldcoin (WLD), the token tied to Sam Altman’s biometric identity startup, World.

Key Takeaways:

• Dan Ives has joined Eightco as chairman to lead a $250 million Worldcoin-focused treasury strategy.
• Eightco will rebrand its ticker to ORBS after closing a $250 million private placement by mid-September.
• Worldcoin aims to build a universal ID system using biometric verification in a future shaped by AI.

Eightco, which trades under the Nasdaq ticker OCTO, announced Monday that Ives will head its board of directors and oversee a treasury initiative focused on acquiring Worldcoin as a core digital asset, according to a Monday report by CNBC.

Eightco to Raise $250M and Rebrand Ticker to ORBS by Mid-September

The company also disclosed a $250 million private placement, set to close around September 11, after which it plans to rebrand its ticker to “ORBS.”

“I view World as the de facto standard for authentication and identification in the future world of AI,” Ives told CNBC, emphasizing that this is not just another crypto play.

The move echoes a recent trend of traditional finance names crossing into crypto. In June, Tom Lee of Fundstrat joined BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company focused on accumulating ETH, which has since soared over 800%.

BitMine is also backing Eightco with a $20 million strategic investment, part of its broader “Moonshot” strategy aimed at supporting ambitious projects in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ives’ decision aligns with a growing number of public firms adopting the MicroStrategy model, leveraging capital markets to buy crypto for their balance sheets.

While Bitcoin remains a core treasury asset for many, newer entrants are reaching deeper into the crypto stack, targeting tokens with specific use cases and higher upside potential.

Worldcoin, launched in 2023, aims to build a universal identity system through biometric verification. Users receive a “World ID” tied to an iris scan and are rewarded with WLD tokens for participating.

The project’s vision, authenticating real humans in a digital world increasingly shaped by AI, has caught the attention of both crypto and traditional finance players.

“As the AI infrastructure grows, identification becomes the limiting factor,” Ives said, pointing to the role Worldcoin could play in a future dominated by digital agents and deepfakes.

Worldcoin currently holds a market cap of around $1 billion, a fraction of Bitcoin’s $2 trillion or Ethereum’s $518 billion, per CoinGecko.

Worldcoin’s World ID Hits 100M Uses

As reported, Worldcoin’s digital identity system, World ID, has surpassed 100 million uses across third-party apps, marking a major milestone for Sam Altman’s identity-focused crypto initiative.

However, the token’s performance tells a different story. WLD remains down 89% from its all-time high of $11.74, currently trading around $0.88, despite a brief spike following Sam Altman’s $6.5 billion collaboration with designer Jony Ive.

Mounting regulatory pressure and uncertainty continue to weigh on the project, prompting a rebrand to World Network and the rollout of new identity tools like NFC passport verification, aimed at privacy-friendly onboarding.

Germany’s GDPR violation ruling triggered widespread data deletion requests, contributing to WLD falling below $2 in December 2024.

France, Portugal, Spain, Hong Kong, and South Korea have all launched investigations into the project’s data practices.

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