Grayscale Files S-1 for Worldcoin ETF as WLD Jumps 4.5% but Still 97% Below Its 2024 Peak

A New Wrapper for an Old Idea

The proposed Grayscale Worldcoin ETF would hold WLD tokens directly and track their value using the CoinDesk Worldcoin Benchmark Rate, less the trust’s fees and expenses, giving traditional brokerage investors direct price exposure without managing private keys or using a crypto exchange. Bank of New York Mellon would serve as transfer agent, while Bitgo Bank & Trust, N.A. would act as custodian.

The filing leaves several key details blank as Grayscale has not yet disclosed the fund’s management fee, its initial seed investment, or how much WLD each share would represent, all of which are typically completed through later amendments as a listing process moves forward. The prospectus also flags regulatory risk factors specific to Worldcoin, including biometric-scanning bans in seven countries and a wallet concentration in which roughly 90% of tokens sit in a small number of addresses.

Notably, Grayscale filed the product under Nasdaq’s generic listing standards rather than seeking a bespoke rule change, a pathway that has shortened approval timelines for several crypto ETFs over the past year. That procedural choice suggests Grayscale expects a faster runway to listing than the years-long fights that characterized the earliest spot bitcoin ETF applications, even with WLD’s unresolved fee and custody details still to be finalized.

What Worldcoin Actually Is

Worldcoin, now branded World Network, was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania through their company Tools for Humanity. The project centers on World ID, a proof-of-personhood verification system that uses iris-scanning Orb devices, alongside the World App and World Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built for verified human users rather than bots. The network has grown to more than 20 million participants since its early rollout.

WLD currently has roughly 3.5 billion tokens in circulation, giving it a market capitalization near $1.36 billion and a rank around the 55th-largest cryptocurrency (per Coingecko). That is a steep comedown from the token’s March 2024 all-time high of $11.80; even after the post-filing pop to $0.38, WLD remains close to 97% below that peak, underscoring how far sentiment around the project has fallen even as its user base has kept growing.

The Orb hardware itself has evolved alongside the network’s growth, with newer versions of the device incorporating Nvidia-powered chips to speed up iris verification, part of a broader push to make the identity-checking process fast enough for mainstream, in-person signups rather than a niche crypto curiosity.

Part of a Broader Grayscale Push

The Worldcoin filing extends a pattern of Grayscale racing to wrap emerging tokens in ETF structures ahead of potential rivals. The firm has also filed to bring a HYPE ETF to Nasdaq, targeting the native asset of the Hyperliquid network, part of a wider strategy of filing for altcoin products across a range of market caps rather than concentrating solely on bitcoin and ether. Whether regulators treat WLD’s biometric-identity model differently from more conventional layer-1 or DeFi tokens will be one of the more closely watched questions as the filing moves through review.

WLD has shown it can move sharply on treasury and institutional news before, given that the token surged more than 40% in a single day after Nasdaq-listed Eightco Holdings announced a $250 million private placement to fund a WLD treasury strategy.