Sam Altman’s Worldcoin wants to scan your eyes in exchange for crypto

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Worldcoin’s orb-shaped devices scan people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency.

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It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie – metallic orbs that scan people’s eyes to pay for them in digital currency.

This is what tech investor Sam Altman worked on for his new start-up, a company called Worldcoin. Launched by “stealth” on Thursday, Worldcoin promises to distribute free cryptocurrencies to people who verify their accounts by performing an iris scan.

Worldcoin says it has already attracted $ 25 million in funding from Silicon Valley investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase and billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, giving the company a valuation of $ 1 billion.

Altman, CEO of artificial intelligence group OpenAI and former chairman of start-up accelerator Y Combinator, co-founded the company with theoretical physics student Alex Blania and Max Novendstern, a former investment partner at Bridgewater Associates.

The idea seems far-fetched at first. Free money? And all I need to do is get my eyes scanned? It sounds too good to be true.

However, the founders of Worldcoin say it’s about expanding the reach of cryptocurrencies – and financial services more broadly – to the masses. Less than 3% of the world’s population are crypto users, according to the Crypto.com virtual currency exchange.

“Cryptocurrency is a very powerful thing,” Blania, CEO of Worldcoin, told CNBC. “It will widen the borders of the economy in general and give access to many people.”

How it works

Worldcoin has already shipped its orb-shaped devices to people in 12 countries. Testers encourage users to register by having their iris scanned. The image is then encrypted and becomes a unique code, while the original data is deleted to protect user privacy. Then, users receive a free share of the cryptocurrency from Worldcoin.

A tester using one of Worldcoin’s orbs in Chile.

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“We designed the whole system to fundamentally preserve privacy,” said Blania. “The code of the iris itself is the only thing that leaves the orb. There is no large database of biometric data.”

The company has already accumulated more than 100,000 users worldwide and onboard 700 more each week. Worldcoin aims to reach 1 billion users by 2023.

Which raises a big question: how exactly should Worldcoin be used?

Well, one of the first features of the project will be a digital wallet that will allow users to store their crypto and make payments. But more generally, Blania hopes to attract developers capable of creating applications on its system; apps “that we don’t see today and that are really difficult to build today because very few people own the crypto.”

“Network effects are those highly coveted things that are incredibly important,” Blania said.

“You see that on Facebook. As soon as you suddenly have a billion people and ordinary people who own something like this and use something like that, you, as an entrepreneur, can build completely new things.”

One problem Worldcoin ran into early on, Blania says, is making sure people aren’t able to cheat the system. He calls this problem “proof of person”.

“The only solution to this problem, we found, was to build an orb,” said the boss of Worldcoin. “It is the safest and most privacy-friendly way we have found to prove that every person in the world is unique.”

“Infrastructure” for basic income

It’s a concept that has parallels with a Universal Basic Income, or UBI, which has been promoted by Altman and several other tech personalities.

The idea is that by regularly distributing money to citizens for free, governments can mitigate the impacts of artificial intelligence and automation on workers.

Blania has hinted that Worldcoin could be used as an “infrastructure” to perform the UBI at some point in the future. “

Worldcoin co-founders Sam Altman and Alex Blania.

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“I am personally very excited about UBI in the long run,” said Blania. “I think it’s a very difficult thing to do right now.”

“We see ourselves as building this huge network of people where entrepreneurs can jump in and build apps like this. UBI is one of those, but building great global financial firms is another. . “

Worldcoin is not the only distant project that Altman has supported. In 2018, the millionaire tech entrepreneur paid a startup called Nectome $ 10,000 to have his brain preserved, digitized, and uploaded into a computer simulation.

The crypto boom

Worldcoin built its system on Ethereum, the blockchain network behind the world’s second largest cryptocurrency. Blania hopes to capitalize on a rapidly growing trend in crypto known as decentralized finance, or DeFi, which seeks to eliminate intermediaries from traditional financial processes like loans and investments.

The launch of Worldcoin comes at a time of renewed interest in cryptocurrencies as the prices of bitcoin and other digital coins have risen in recent times. Bitcoin, the world’s largest virtual currency, hit a new high above $ 66,000 on Wednesday, while ether, XRP and other tokens also rose sharply.

Cryptocurrencies have gained a reputation for their involvement in fraudulent activity, with various pump-and-dump programs tricking amateur investors into buying tokens, only to make creators and insiders walk away with millions. . But Blania insists Worldcoin is not a scam.

“We are extremely transparent about everything we do,” he said. “We’re going to open the source code of whatever is possible to open the source code. “

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