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The price of the Worldcoin token has gained 141% in a week amid the launch of Sora and its World App reaching one million users. Meanwhile, a tech startup looking to build an Ethereum-based synthetic dollar has raised $14 million in fresh financing and a project has come out in defense of YouTuber KSI after he was accused of being a pump-and-dump merchant.

Worldcoin (WLD) token a crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has surged more than 140% over the last week, as its daily users ticked over the 1 million mark.

In a Feb. 18 post to X, Worldcoin announced that its crypto wallet application, dubbed World App, had notched more than 1 million users, a significant growth from just 100,000 daily active users in November last year.

Launched in July 2023 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, Worldcoin is a self-described privacy-preserving digital identity verification project that pays users in its native cryptocurrency in exchange for scanning their irises.

Worldcoins gains over the week have come alongside several major updates from OpenAI.

On Feb. 16, OpenAI unveiled its new text-to-video generator, Sora, allowing users to generate video clips and scenes from text prompts.

A week earlier, on Feb. 9, Altman announced that he would seek to raise a staggering $7 trillion to help the firm fund and scale its semiconductor chip development. While the massive dollar figure raised eyebrows throughout the tech world, Altman didnt seem too phased.

Technology startup Ethena Labs has raised $14 million in funding to further the development of its Ethereum-based synthetic dollar.

The funding round was disclosed on Feb. 16 and builds off a previous $6 million round that was led by Binance Labs, Gemini and Bybit, among others. The current round was primarily backed by venture capital firm Dragonfly.

Ethena Labs is developing USDe, a synthetic dollar backed by delta-hedging strategies using Ether (ETH) as primary collateral. Since launching in December, USDe has amassed more than $200 million in total value locked, according to industry data.

USDe maintains its rough target to the U.S. dollar by delta-hedging assets provided by users minting USDe to short-staked Ethereum collateral using perpetual swaps to achieve delta-neutral stability, the company shared with Cointelegraph.

Ethenas project hopes to build off the enormous success of stablecoins, which have emerged as one of the single biggest use cases of blockchain technology. The total market cap of stablecoins is valued at $138 billion, according to Coincodex.

Oliver Bell, the founder of the Xcad Network, has leaped to the defense of YouTuber turned crypto guru KSI, who was accused of performing a pump-and-dump scam by investigator ZachXBT.

After ZachXBT shared screenshots of KSIs X account posting about XCAD and then dumping $850,000 of the tokens in the days that followed, Bell posted a response, arguing that the YouTuber had all the rights to sell his tokens.

On Feb. 15, Bell said in a post that KSI had been one of their biggest value adders who made introductions and suggestions around the product. The executive argued that while KSI sold some tokens, the YouTuber bought a lot more than he sold.

Bell also directly disputed the allegations, saying KSI did not pump and dump XCAD. Bell wrote that KSI remains an active investor and believer who has other wallets and has been one of their solid supporters.

The internet celebrity further explained that he didnt have any malicious intent in trying to scam and said that he was new to crypto and was excited. Attempting to explain the posts and the selling that followed, KSI said that every time he tweeted something, the opposite would occur, and thats why he decided to tweet the opposite of what he was actually doing.

However, another crypto investigator, Coffeezilla, argued that KSI publicly saying one thing and then privately doing the opposite is the definition of a pump and dump. Whether it is successful or not, Coffeezilla argued that what KSI did was a pump and dump. I dont really buy that he had no clue that tweeting one thing would positively affect the price in his favor.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Additional reporting by Geraint Price, Sam Bourgi and Felix Ng.

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