Sam Altman’s World Token Launches in Six U.S. States—Visa Card Integration Goes Live

Silicon Valley’s favorite crypto-project just got real-world utility. World, Sam Altman’s decentralized identity and payments protocol, is now live in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Colorado, and Illinois—complete with a Visa-powered debit card that converts crypto to fiat at point-of-sale.

The big reveal: World’s token (WRLD) will power gas fees for on-chain identity verification, with transaction rebates for Visa card users. Early adopters get 5% cashback in WRLD for the first 90 days—a classic ’growth hack’ move that’ll probably burn more VC cash than a Web3 startup’s Solana validator.

Regulatory chess: The six-state rollout strategically avoids SEC scrutiny by using existing money transmitter licenses. Because nothing says ’decentralization’ like playing jurisdictional hopscotch with banking regulators.

Bullish take: This could be the first crypto-native product that normies actually use—if they can stomach the KYC requirements. The Visa card isn’t revolutionary, but the onramp from decentralized identity to traditional finance? That might just be Altman’s masterstroke.

Alongside its American release, the project assured users that they would be given complete control over their digital identity. Through the project’s feature called Personal Custody, the project claimed that users’ personal data would remain stored only on their device and it would not be transferred to the project’s server or any third party.

“Advanced cryptographic systems – including Anonymized Multi-Party Computation and zero knowledge proofs – ensure that your data and actions remain private while your humanity is verified,” wrote the project.

World Card powered by Visa

In addition, the project announced that it also plans to release a debit card powered by Visa which would automatically be connected to the World App. Users would be able to spend their WLD tokens at any merchant that accepts Visa cards.

Merchants would receive fiat currencies instead of WLD tokens, allowing users to spend rewards without having to convert their cryptocurrency into cash.

Once it is publicly available, verified users will have the opportunity to receive a card that is linked to their unique World ID.

At press time, WLD has gone down 2.33% in the past 24 hours. The token is currently valued at $1.05, after reaching a daily high of $1.17. Its market cap stands at nearly $1.4 billion, with a daily trading volume of $465 million. In the past week, the token has gone up by 23.59%.