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

Steven Spielberg

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

Worldcoin

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

That’s what tech investor Sam Altman has been working on for his new start-up, a company called Worldcoin. Launched out of “stealth” on Thursday, Worldcoin promises to hand out free cryptocurrency to people who verify their accounts by taking an iris scan.

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

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

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

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

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

How it works

Worldcoin has already shipped its orb-shaped devices to people in 12 countries. Testers get users to sign up by having their iris scanned. The image is then encrypted and becomes a unique code, while the original data is deleted to protect users’ privacy. Following that, users are given a free share of Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency.

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

Worldcoin

“We designed the whole system to be fundamentally privacy-preserving,” Blania said. “The iris code itself is the only thing leaving the orb. There’s no big database of biometric data.”

The company has so far amassed over 100,000 users globally already, and is onboarding 700 more each week. Worldcoin aims to hit 1 billion users by 2023.

Which raises a big question — how exactly is Worldcoin meant to be used?

Well, one early feature of the project will be a digital wallet that lets users store their crypto and make payments. But more broadly, Blania hopes to attract developers who can build apps on top of its system; apps “that we don’t see today and that are really hard to build today because very few people hold crypto.”

“Network effects are these very coveted things that are incredibly big,” Blania said.

“You see this in Facebook. As soon as you suddenly have a billion people and everyday people holding something like that and using something like that, you as an entrepreneur can build completely new things.”

One issue Worldcoin encountered early on, Blania says, is ensuring that people aren’t able to cheat the system. He calls this problem “proof of person.”

“The only solution for that problem, we found, was to build an orb,” Worldcoin’s boss said. “It’s the most secure and privacy-preserving way we found to prove everyone in the world is unique.”

‘Infrastructure’ for basic income

Worldcoin co-founders Sam Altman and Alex Blania.

Worldcoin

Crypto boom

Worldcoin has built its system on Ethereum, the blockchain network behind the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. Blania hopes to tap into a fast-growing trend in crypto known as decentralized finance, or DeFi, which seeks to cut the middlemen out of traditional financial processes like lending and investing.

Worldcoin’s launch comes at a time of renewed interest in cryptocurrencies as the prices of bitcoin and other digital coins have surged lately. Bitcoin, the world’s largest virtual currency, notched a fresh record high above $66,000 on Wednesday, while ether, XRP and other tokens also climbed sharply.

Cryptocurrencies have gained a reputation for their involvement in fraudulent activity, with various pump-and-dump schemes duping amateur investors into buying tokens, only for the creators and insiders to make off with millions. But Blania insists Worldcoin isn’t a scam.

“We are extremely transparent about everything we do,” he said. “We will open source everything that is possible to open source.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/21/sam-altmans-worldcoin-wants-to-scan-your-eyes-in-exchange-for-crypto.html

Next Post

NICE CXone Achieves Perfect Vendor Satisfaction Scores Across 15 Categories in DMG Consulting Report

Receiving top satisfaction ratings, NICE CXone recognized for innovation and current product in cloud-based contact center infrastructure report HOBOKEN, N.J., November 01, 2021–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) today announced that CXone has received perfect 5.0 scores in 15 customer satisfaction categories across DMG Consulting’s 2021-2022 Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Product and […]

Subscribe US Now