Cash-strapped Argentines queue for eyeball scans

A man has his iris scanned with an orb, a biometric data scanning device, in exchange for the Worldcoin cryptocurrency in Buenos Aires. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of Argentines have stood in front of a Worldcoin orb to scan the iris of their eyes in inflation-hit Argentina, where recent tightening delivered the coup de grace. — AFP

BUENOS AIRES: Argentines eyeing a financial boost are lining up by the thousands to have their irises scanned in exchange for a few crypto tokens as part of an online biometrics project under scrutiny in several countries.

Some three million people worldwide have so far provided their iris data to Worldcoin, an initiative of OpenAI chief Sam Altman, but few have embraced the project more fervently than Argentines.