Crypto has broken new ground yet again, not in the exchange of digital currencies meant to upset the global economic paradigm, but by facilitating the black market trade of people’s biometric data. Specifically, fraudsters desperate to glom onto a crypto project headed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are reportedly buying detailed scans of people’s irises in order to claim coins for the still-unreleased Worldcoin project.
The news first came to light by China-based crypto outlet BlockBeats, which tweeted Thursday about a black market for irises used to gain access to the Worldcoin network beta. Users need to submit their eye to a scan by a Worldcoin “Orb,” a physical imaging device used to capture high-resolution images of their body and face. Those who do are promised free crypto tokens while their accounts are anonymized. Essentially, the project wants to offer a kind of universal basic income for all those who prove they’re still “human” and not one of Altman’s own AI chatbots (or worse, Altman’s ill-defined sense of a so-called AGI).
These Orb operators are spread throughout the countries where the company currently operates, which as it happens does not include mainland China. The company says there are more than 1.7 million people signed up so far. But according to BlockBeats, people in China are buying the iris data from people in Cambodia, Kenya, and a few other countries for as little as $30 a pop.