PANews reported on May 16 that according to Protos, Terence Kwok, CEO of Humanity Protocol, a Worldcoin competitor that previously raised $30 million, almost bankrupted his smartphone company valued at $1.5 billion and burned $170 million of investors' funds. Terence Kwok founded Hong Kong-based Tink Labs in 2012. The unicorn company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to provide hotels with smartphones for guests to use during their stay. His goal is to provide guests with an alternative to roaming charges, improve their hotel experience, and sell collected customer preference data.

However, the Financial Times reported that his company began operating at a loss of £9.06 million in 2017. This was reportedly caused by a combination of factors, including his aggressive expansion policy, roaming charges becoming cheaper and more widespread, and hotels not wanting to pay for the phones he gave away. According to a former employee, Tink Labs' investor SoftBank was concerned that the company was "moving funds from its Japanese joint ventures to other regions to stay afloat", so it forced the company to abruptly stop a major project. Kwok allegedly had difficulty paying employees and contractors, and ultimately carried out large-scale layoffs before closing Tink Labs on August 1 of that year. Laid-off employees reportedly "smeared cake all over the walls and floors" when they left the company's Oxford office. Tink Labs' European division went into liquidation in January 2020 and subsequently entered bankruptcy proceedings. "I never thought it would last, but I didn't expect it to close so quickly," the former head of HR operations at Tink Labs told the Financial Times. She also told the Financial Times that Kwok only cared about "making money."

Last year, Kwok launched Humanity Protocol, a blockchain-based identity verification company that relies on scanning people’s palms as a form of identification.