A16z, Coinbase-Backed Startup Looks to Distribute Crypto to Everyone on Earth by Scanning Their Eyeballs: Report

Worldcoin, a startup founded by former Y Combinator head Sam Altman, wants to distribute crypto to everyone on the planet by scanning their eyeballs.

The company has designed an orb-shaped unit that can produce a unique personal identifier from an iris scan, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
Altman, former president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, devised the concept in 2019 around experimentation on universal basic income and how money could be distributed to people in a way that circumvents the role of government.
"I've been interested in things like universal basic income and what's going to happen to global wealth distribution and how we can do that better, is there a way we can use technology to do that at a global scale," Altman said to Bloomberg.
Aspirations of financial inclusion are nothing new in crypto, though the concept of scanning eyeballs may be seen as a controversial way of achieving it.
Worldcoin, whose backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, recently raised around $25 million from investors, Bloomberg said.

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