Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball in Exchange for Cryptocurrency

Sam Altman has a new startup that intends to give a special type of cryptocurrency to every person on earth. But first, it wants to scan everybody’s eyeballs.

Altman, the former head of the Silicon Valley business incubator Y Combinator, is one of three founders of the company Worldcoin. 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.

The company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital arm of Coinbase Global Inc., LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Day One Ventures. It recently ...