European regulatory crackdown lands, Worldcoin (WLD) faces a "permanent ban" at its darkest moment
The cryptocurrency market faced a regulatory black swan today, as AI identity verification leader Worldcoin (WLD) is experiencing the most severe survival crisis since its inception. According to the latest disclosures from Reuters and The Block, the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection (BayLDA) and the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) have unusually issued a joint statement today, proposing to upgrade the previous temporary restrictions on Worldcoin's iris scanning operations to a "permanent ban." After two years of in-depth investigation, regulators determined that Worldcoin's data collection model has fundamental flaws in protecting minors' privacy and implementing the GDPR's "right to be forgotten," and the immutability of blockchain technology makes the complete deletion of biometric data technically inconsistent.
Upon the announcement, panic selling erupted in the secondary market, causing WLD's price to plummet sharply, with intraday losses once exceeding 18%, hitting a new low since 2026. On-chain data further shows that leading market makers such as Wintermute quickly transferred large amounts of tokens to exchanges after the statement was released, indicating extremely strong risk-averse sentiment. Although the Worldcoin Foundation urgently responded that its latest "personal custody" technology has addressed privacy pain points and pledged to appeal to the European Court, market confidence is on the verge of collapse under the historically strict enforcement of GDPR fines (which can reach up to 4% of global turnover) in the EU. This incident not only severely impacted WLD's fundamentals but also cast a heavy compliance shadow over the entire Web3 biometric recognition sector, advising investors to remain highly cautious until the legal outcomes are clear.
