Worldcoin, cofounded by Sam Altman, raises $25M, plans a cryptocurrency belonging to all people on earth, and is making a device to ID recipients via iris scan
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
Worldcoin's $25M round, led by a16z per the launch coverage, funds two things at once: a cryptocurrency meant to belong to all people on Earth, and the hardware to make that claim verifiable — an orb-shaped device that identifies recipients by iris scan. The bet is that universal distribution needs universal proof-of-personhood, not just wallets.
That thesis gets stress-tested fast: within months Worldcoin is exchanging tokens for eye scans with 100K users and a $1B valuation (token-launch coverage), then pausing operations in seven countries over uneven smartphone access, confused users, and fraud attempts — before Tools for Humanity pulls in a $115M Series C to keep scaling the eye-scanning ID mission.
First-order effects
A16z's capital moves Worldcoin from whitepaper to hardware production: the orb device becomes the company's real product, since distributing a coin 'to all people' requires verifying each recipient is a unique human.
Early users face a novel trade the market hasn't priced yet — handing over an iris scan in exchange for crypto — putting Worldcoin's onboarding funnel, not its tokenomics, as the immediate bottleneck.
Second-order effects
Field friction forces redesign of the rollout itself: the seven-country shutdowns push Worldcoin to solve smartphone access gaps, user confusion, and fraud vectors before expanding further, making operations discipline the gating factor on growth.
By pairing token grants with biometric identity, Worldcoin turns 'who counts as a user' into a competitive moat other crypto projects lack — but also hands regulators and privacy critics a concrete target that pure-token projects never offered.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, crypto legitimacy stops being a matter of code audits and becomes a question of identity infrastructure: whether a privately built biometric registry can stand in for state-issued ID determines how far 'currency for everyone on Earth' can actually reach.
The trajectory from $25M seed to nine-figure follow-on signals investors treating proof-of-personhood as a durable layer beneath crypto rather than a gimmick — though the operational halts show the layer only works if the scanning network survives contact with the real world.
The trend: Cryptocurrency distribution is converging on biometric proof-of-personhood, with Worldcoin's orb turning token access into an identity-verification business.
The former head of Y Combinator is launching a new cryptocurrency that will be distributed to every single person in the world. To get it you need to do a scan of your eyeball https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @ellenhuet and @GillianTan
@mayazi
@mayazi on x
Give the Silicon Valley elite access to your biometrics as a proof-of-identity. Seems like an anti-thesis of the crypto permission-less narrative, instead of protecting free access, it's designed to create new data moats for tech insiders https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@shvandrew
Andrey Shevchenko on x
I kinda like the concept in principle but it seems its goal is “get a database of irises” and not “launch a legit crypto project”. Only acceptable way to do it is with zk proofs on a private blockchain, anything else would be deeply dystopian. https://twitter.com/...
@jamie_jk
Jamie King on x
bringing new meaning to ‘peer to peer’ currency... https://twitter.com/...
@originalspin
Jeff Yang on x
So this definitely won't lead to people harvesting eyeballs https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@ketanj0
Ketan Joshi on x
This is deeply funny for several reasons but a key one is the idea that libertarians are going to love getting eyeball scans https://twitter.com/...
@thestalwart
Joe Weisenthal on x
If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason not to scan your irises in exchange for $10 with of crypto
@autismcapital
@autismcapital on x
So the Illuminati want you to stare directly into and pledge allegiance to an orb in exchange for free money...? They're really not hiding it at all are they. Times like this we reminisce on Salem. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@prestonjbyrne
Preston Byrne on x
“Hey you know what would be a good idea? Bitcoin, except you have your private keys tattooed on your face” https://twitter.com/...
@sama
Sam Altman on x
if i were trying to be a supervillain i would come up with a MUCH better plan than iris scanning
@dcurtis
Dustin Curtis on x
What a headline. We live in interesting times. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@wsfoxley
Will Foxley on x
a16z gets mad when people dont like them and then creates a token to steal your biometrics and then dump on you https://twitter.com/...
@bradstone
Brad Stone on x
Scan eyeball for free crypto. More info here: https://twitter.com/...
@mecee
Christopher Calicott on x
Negative. Nope. Nuh-uh. https://twitter.com/...
@generalising
Andrew Gray on x
It's quite the achievement to start with “launch a cryptocurrency” and then follow it with an even worse idea, but there we go. https://twitter.com/...
@whet
Whet Moser on x
this is a genuine, unironically great dystopian sci-fi prompt. even the greats would be jealous of this plot idea https://twitter.com/...
@timmaughan
Tim Maughan on x
good morning time to go back to bed https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@martinkl
Martin Kleppmann on x
This thought was triggered by Sam Altman wanting to scan the eyeballs of everybody on Earth in order to give them some of his proprietary cryptocurrency. Did they really think it through? This would have never passed ethics review... https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://drive.go…
@smdiehl
Stephen Diehl on x
Hard pass on this nightmare dystopia. I can't even count how many terrible things are embedded in this idea. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@alexhern
Alex Hern on x
BELIEVE IN ORB https://twitter.com/...
@alexhern
Alex Hern on x
ORB https://twitter.com/...
@alexhern
Alex Hern on x
ORB https://twitter.com/...
@ellenhuet
Ellen Huet on x
scoop! 👀 @GillianTan & i heard that @sama had co-founded a new startup. so we dug around and found: - it's a crypto startup (k makes sense) - it has already designed a silver basketball-sized orb that will scan your irises to identify you (wait what??) https://www.bloomberg.com/.…
@thestalwart
Joe Weisenthal on x
@ellenhuet @GillianTan “Among the many parts of its plan, Worldcoin has designed an orb-shaped device that would scan a person's iris to construct a unique personal identifier.”
@shiraovide
Shira Ovide on x
At least 1x a week, I think about a conversation with @merbroussard who essentially asked: What if we *didn't* use technology for this? https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@dubikan
@dubikan on x
When a person watches a dystopian thriller and thinks “what technological ideas can we crib from this narrative?” https://twitter.com/...
@internetofshit
@internetofshit on x
looks like the plot of ‘The Circle’ wasn't dystopian enough for venture capitalists https://twitter.com/...
@boomereng
Kelly Criterion Eng on x
love to give up immutable biometric data in exchange for chuckle cheese tickets https://twitter.com/...
@robpegoraro
Rob Pegoraro on x
And here I thought Dave Eggers' The Circle was a laughably heavy-handed take on techno-utopianism... https://twitter.com/...
@counternotions
Kontra on x
TIRED: Drinking young people's blood for anti-aging WIRED: Scanning every human's eyeball for crypto identification https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@profcarroll
David Carroll on x
“The device is a silver-colored spherical gizmo the size of a basketball that can be carried around and used to scan people's irises in order to ascertain their unique identities” Reminder: SV's definition of ‘privacy’ is quite different than yours. https://twitter.com/...