On Saturday, Worldcoin (WLD) experienced a notable increase, surpassing Bitcoin (BTC) in daily gains, as activity on its blockchain surged. Meanwhile, Bitcoin traded below $85,000.
According to data from DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) on World Chain, the Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 platform associated with the WLD project, saw a boost of 12.28% within a 24-hour period, reaching $45.12 million.
The upward trend for Worldcoin is part of a more extended rally, with WLD climbing approximately 23% over the past week, 61% over the last month, and 25.2% year-to-date (YTD). This performance occurred despite a broader market decline, where the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped by over 2%, with Bitcoin maintaining a dominance of 57.7%.
Worldcoin emerged as one of the most discussed tickers on Stocktwits. WLD experienced a price increase exceeding 7% in the last 24 hours.
Sentiment on Stocktwits regarding WLD shifted to ‘extremely bullish’ from a previous ‘bullish’ classification, with discussions remaining at ‘high’ levels over the past 24 hours.
Short Positions Suffer Losses
The rise in Worldcoin’s value resulted in losses for traders betting against it. A liquidation occurs when a trader takes a leveraged position, and if the market moves adversely, the exchange closes the position to prevent further losses.
Within the last hour, approximately $241,590 worth of WLD positions were liquidated, compared to about $133,050 for Bitcoin, as per CoinGlass data. The losses for Worldcoin positions were roughly 82% greater, despite the larger market cap of Bitcoin.
Most of the liquidated positions in that hour were short bets—traders speculating that the price would decrease. CoinGlass reported total liquidations across all tokens at $1.94 million, with short positions accounting for $1.14 million.
However, over the span of 24 hours, there were $343.96 million in liquidations, with long positions—traders betting on price increases—constituting $305.45 million of that amount. This aligns with a market trend where most tokens experienced declines, while Worldcoin stood out as an exception.
Worldcoin’s AI Connections Attract Attention
WLD is recognized as being closely associated with AI, which often impacts market sentiment. Though Worldcoin and its parent company, Tools for Humanity, are separate entities, they’re connected through their chairman, Sam Altman, who is also the CEO of OpenAI (OPEAZZX).
The recent rally follows an agreement made on September 29, where six executives, including Google’s (GOOG) Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s (META) Mark Zuckerberg, xAI’s Elon Musk, and Nvidia’s (NVDA) Jensen Huang, signed a voluntary AI safety commitment at the White House.
Although OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, represented the company at the signing instead of CEO Sam Altman, who is the chairman of Tools for Humanity, they remain integral to the initiative.
On Friday, Altman noted that Cerebras (CRBS) serves as a “close partner” to OpenAI, emphasizing a collaborative effort in exploring advancements in speed. The agreement includes OpenAI committing to utilizing 750 megawatts of Cerebras’ computing power through 2028, with Cerebras estimating the partnership’s value at over $20 billion.