OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Worldcoin cryptocurrency comes under the scrutiny of European regulators

Less than a week after its launch, the World currency cryptographic project by OpenAI CEO Sam Altmann is already under scrutiny by European regulators for its reliance on an eye scan to verify a user’s identity, the French data protection agency said on Friday.

Worldcoin launch on Monday comes as cryptocurrency the industry is going through a tough time following the spectacular collapse of FTX and several lawsuits against major players in the industry.

Using eye scans, it seeks to solve one of the main challenges facing the cryptocurrency sector: such a high level of anonymity that makes it vulnerable to scams and spam bots, which TO THE risks getting exponentially worse.

But Worldcoin’s collection of biometric data could conflict with Europe’s strict data privacy regulations.

“Worldcoin has started collecting data in France… which seems questionable, as does the storage of biometric data,” French data regulator CNIL told AFP.

After conducting an initial review, the CNIL said it had identified its counterpart in the German state of Bavaria as the lead agency in Europe to conduct an investigation into Worldcoin and said it supported their investigation.

Worldcoin in fact began operating in June in Germany, the birthplace of co-founder Alex Blania.

The Bavarian data protection agency had no comment when contacted by AFP on Friday.

With its cryptocurrency and identification system, Worldcoin aims to create “the world’s largest public identity and financial network,” according to its website.

Altman and Blania said earlier this week in a letter sent to Twitterwhich will be renamed Xthat Worldcoin offers “a reliable solution to distinguish humans from AI online while preserving privacy.”

This in turn will allow Worldcoin as a blockchain-based technology to dramatically increase economic opportunities and enable democratic processes.

Blockchains are distributed databases that facilitate the verification and traceability of transactions.

They can offer lower costs and faster data transfer while ensuring secure transactions, although the most famous blockchain that powers the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, is known for being slow and expensive as it requires enormous computer processing power to validate transactions as part of its system to reward processors with new bitcoins.

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