OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s departure from OpenAI, which reverberated across the tech community, has notably influenced the trajectory of Worldcoin price in the crypto market. This significant shift in leadership at OpenAI has triggered a sharp decline in the value of Worldcoin’s WLD token. As of now, WLD is trading at $1.980, indicating a decrease of more than 13.83% within a day according to CoinMarketCap.

This decline marks a substantial 40% drop from WLD’s peak value of $3.30, achieved when Worldcoin transitioned from beta in July. Within the last 24 hours, WLD has experienced a trading volume of $183 million, with around 40% of this volume stemming from the WLD and Tether (USDT) trading pair on Binance.

Altman, a co-founder of Worldcoin alongside Max Novendstern and Alex Blania in 2019, was removed from his position as OpenAI’s CEO due to alleged issues with transparent communication that impacted the board’s responsibilities. The board of directors, in a blog post on Friday, expressed a loss of confidence in Altman’s ability to continue leading OpenAI.

Surprisingly, despite Altman’s departure, the broader category of AI-related coins and tokens hasn’t displayed significant effects. In the past day, the AI coin market cap has surged by 30% to reach $5.4 billion.

Worldcoin, a biometric cryptocurrency project developed by Tools for Humanity with bases in San Francisco and Berlin, is designed to authenticate human identity online through a system called World ID. This mechanism aims to combat bots and fake identities. Users become part of the network by undergoing iris scans using orb-shaped scanners and receive Worldcoin tokens in return, drawing inspiration from the concept of universal basic income.