Scan your eyes, get crypto: Sam Altman’s World orbs come to the US

The Verge

Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project is now available in the US and brought its eye-scanning orbs, too. At an event dubbed “At Last” in San Francisco, Sam Altman and Tools for Humanity unveiled their latest plans to bring blockchain-based identity to the mainstream. Deputy editor Alex Heath and supervising producer Vjeran Pavic bring you the latest news from the event.

Transcript

00:00okay so right now i am in san francisco and i'm on my way to a world coin event what is world coin

00:06you might have heard about world coin in probably three ways one it is that company that sam altman

00:15is involved two if you're into crypto you probably heard about it it's also a token

00:20and third you might have heard about world coin because they made that iris scanning orb that

00:25looks like this and yeah this company has kind of wild and out there ambitious ideas about what

00:34it wants to do so the iris scanning orb is basically there to prove your humanness to verify that you're

00:41a human and they say it's very important in the world that we live in today which is just covered

00:46with ai bots and things like that to be able to have another metric and basically they want to create

00:52an entirely new protocol and that digital id can be used for everything and by everyone to do

00:59everything from managing your digital currencies and your crypto wallets to being able to log into

01:06websites and proving that you are a real human so but yeah i'm not entirely sure what to expect

01:12out of the event but i want to take you on this little journey because i do think it's going to

01:17be interesting i do think we're going to get lots of news probably some new hardware yeah so

01:22let's let's take a look

01:23this flashy event by tools for humanity which is a parent company of world was held in a large

01:32warehouse space near the san francisco bay the space inside was decked out with the iris scanning

01:37orbs for attendees to verify their humanness if they wanted to the keynote itself lasted about 45 minutes

01:44with both co-founders alex blania and sam altman giving us the latest updates on all aspects of this

01:50company the cryptocurrency the orbs and many partnerships that they were able to form since

01:56the launch all right so the keynote just wrapped up and we finally met up with alex i'm going to ask

02:02you a bunch of questions about what happened today so he's going to do the whole recap for the event

02:06and i hope you can hear us because it is very loud in here it is very loud

02:11this was a lot the biggest thing by far today was the u.s launch of world point right so you go back

02:24to when i first got my eye scan actually in los angeles this was in 2023 there was no token you couldn't

02:31get in the u.s they wouldn't really say why but at the time the sec was being very litigious against

02:36crypto startups they were getting sued left and right and there still isn't any clear regulatory

02:42framework around crypto but what's shifted obviously is the trump administration right

02:46you've got david sachs you've got a lot of people in the white house who are now wanting to be friendly

02:51to crypto that played a big role in giving them the confidence to turn this on in the u.s because at the

02:57end of the day it is still a classic cryptocurrency in that it fluctuates wildly and then you add when

03:03you tack on this other frankly kind of freaky aspect of scanning your eye and the data privacy

03:09concerns around that you could run into a lot of problems with regulators like they have in other

03:14countries i think they don't want to obviously have that happen in the u.s and now they're hopeful that

03:18the new administration will uh let them run and let them do what they want to do i think having

03:23visa on board this this debit card that they've launched is another big sign of confidence that

03:28was a huge thing to see to see that this cryptocurrency is now going to be working with

03:32visa where you can use it at any location that accepts visa and it will switch it into fiat at

03:39checkout that seems like a pretty big deal something you have to do with a project like this is get

03:44people to actually scan their eyes right and world point is supposed to be the incentive for doing so

03:49you get scanned and you get world coin airdropped into your world wallet app but how do people find

03:56these orbs so what they announced today is that there's going to be over 7 000 orbs in the u.s that

04:01they're releasing initially through this world space retail concept and it's made to look kind of like

04:07an apple store there's one launching here in san francisco tomorrow they're going to be in a bunch of

04:11other cities la atlanta etc and that's to just get people familiar with this tech and have them come

04:18in and scan their eye they were doing these drives with the orbs and these retail pop-ups in a bunch

04:24of countries over the last couple of years just not really here because the coin was not available

04:28until now but now that they're you know finally able to put the coin out they're going to go pretty

04:34heavy and have they said 4x the number of orbs that they've ever had in deployment just in the u.s so

04:39the u.s is obviously a big priority for any project but definitely something like this that is

04:44financial relies on a lot of you know glitzy partnerships with american tech companies so

04:50you're going to be seeing these orbs out and about probably in the next few months

04:57they're actually pushing beyond this orb concept too they have well they're still calling it an orb

05:01mini but it looks like a smartphone the idea there is just to make it so that anyone can go up to

05:07someone and if they hopefully say yes right you're not going to force them but they say yes stand their eye

05:12and yeah i'm still kind of grappling with why people are going to want to do this right it's a

05:17very obvious question this this whole thing feels a bit like black mirror it feels a little too sci-fi

05:24to be real and i think people will naturally be very skeptical of something like this i think the

05:29onus is going to be on world to show that world coin is not just some random cryptocurrency but something

05:35you can use in your daily life they're still very early on that though and i think that's the big

05:39question mark is can they really make this more than just a cryptocurrency i haven't seen a startup

05:45be this ambitious in a while we saw a lot of partnerships they announced stripe match group with

05:52tender razor they're really trying to get this id layer that comes with when you scan your eyes world

05:59id trying to get it everywhere so it's this utility play that frankly feels refreshing to see a lot of

06:05crypto projects lack any real utility beyond speculating on the price of the crypto so it

06:12seems like world is very focused on actually trying to make this a thing people use and not just uh trade

06:19on so that was a big takeaway uh the other takeaway is just the sam ulman of all of this right he's the

06:25chairman of tools for humanity which is the parent company of world obviously he's also the ceo of open

06:32and i think there's just a lot of energy around anything sam is doing i'm not sure that a crypto

06:38startup like this would necessarily be able to make these levels of partnerships happen or an event like

06:44this happen without someone like sam uh behind them i heard even gavin newsom was here today for the

06:50keynote so there's just a lot of interest in this project both from regulators but also from people in

06:56the crypto community which is a lot of who's behind me and that's a really interesting dynamic to see to

07:02see both those sides coming together for something like this that's basically it from the world coin

07:08event i am extremely curious what do you think about this whole project it feels like there is a good

07:17reasoning behind things like that we do live in a world that is just filled with generated ai content

07:24and now people and that's not going to slow down but are we actually ready for this are you ready to scan

07:30your iris use your face as sort of a passport for everything online and in the physical world as

07:37you've seen today so i'm very curious what do you guys think let me know in the comments down below

07:43and we'll check all right have a good one

Category

Transcript

Recommended