Sam Altman’s controversial blockchain project, World, is launching in the U.S. – and said it intends to roll out 7,500 eye-scanning “orbs” in cities across the country by the end of the year.

World’s orbs — chrome, bowling ball-shaped devices that scan a person’s eyeballs to confirm their identity — will initially be available to Americans in six “key innovation hubs,” the company said: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco. Those who decide to take the plunge and gaze into the orb will gain access to the World app and receive an airdrop of World’s WLD token. By the end of the year, the project aims to have enough orbs spread throughout the U.S. to give 180 million Americans, more than half the population, access to World’s network.

Altman and other executives at World’s parent company Tools for Humanity announced the U.S. expansion at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, along with a dizzying slew of new features and partnerships for the project.

The World app will now offer its users access to crypto-backed loans through non-custodial lending protocol Morpho and prediction markets through Kalshi. Later this year, WLD holders will be able to spend their tokens like cash with a new World-linked Visa debit card. The project is even integrating its identity-verification technology into some online dating apps. Starting with Tinder users in Japan, online dating giant Match Group will pilot using World ID to verify the ages of its users.

Altman said that the idea for World predated OpenAI, his generative artificial intelligence (AI) company.

“We needed some sort of way for authenticating humans in the age of [artificial general intelligence],” Altman said during the press conference. “We needed a way that we could know what content was made by humans, [and what was made] by AI. We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content.”

Altman’s initial ideas about how to solve the problem of human verification were “very crazy,” he said – World and its eye-scanning orbs, only a little.

World is the latest crypto project to announce a U.S. expansion. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the regulatory environment has become much friendlier to crypto projects.

The company announced it would be building a factory in Richardson, Texas – a suburb of Dallas – to help produce the orbs needed for its coming U.S. expansion. After the initial rollout, other major cities including Seattle, Orlando, San Diego and Las Vegas will receive the second wave of orbs.

“They will really be everywhere,” said Alex Blania, Tools for Humanity’s co-founder. “They will be in gas stations, convenience stores, and you will be able to verify within 10 minutes wherever you are.”

Tether, the issuer behind the nearly $150 billion USDT stablecoin, has finalized the purchase of a 70% stake in the Latin American agricultural firm Adecoagro (AGRO), which has a market cap of nearly a billion dollars.

Tether initially invested $100 million in Adecoagro in September 2024 for a 9.8% stake, then offered to increase it to 51% in February, and finally raised it to control 70% in March.

Read more: Tether’s $100M Investment in LatAm Agriculture Firm May Be a Tokenization Play

This majority stake gives Tether control over one of the region’s most prominent food and bioenergy producers. Adecoagro owns sugar mills, rice farms, dairy operations, and renewable energy assets across Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Tether said it aims to help scale Adecoagro’s output while aligning the company with its mission of fostering “economic freedom” through decentralized finance and investment in underserved markets.

The move might be part of Tether’s ambition to tokenize real-world assets, as it launched its asset tokenization service Hadron last year. The platform was designed to simplify the process of converting a wide range of real-world assets, including bonds, commodities, stocks, other stablecoins, and loyalty points into digital tokens on blockchain rails.

Read more: Tether Unveils New Platform to Simplify Asset Tokenization for Businesses, Nation-States

«By aligning with in Adecoagro’s proven expertise in agriculture and renewable energy, we are taking another concrete step toward bridging traditional industries with the future of decentralized finance and economic empowerment,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether.

Following the deal, Adecoagro’s board was also reshuffled. Five members stepped down and were replaced by executives tied to Tether and its strategic goals. Juan Sartori, a Uruguayan businessman with political and agricultural interests, took over as chairman.

In the past year, Tether has launched ventures in bitcoin mining, AI, and encrypted communications. AGRO’s shares were up 2.6% on Wednesday.

Read more: Tether’s $100M Investment in LatAm Agriculture Firm May Be a Tokenization Play

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

There was a bit of volatility in crypto on Wednesday, but most of the market continued the weeks’ trend of trading in a very tight range.

Shortly after the close of the U.S. stock market, bitcoin (BTC) was changing hands at $94,700, down just 0.4% over the past 24 hours. BTC was lower by nearly 2% at one point alongside a sizable early decline in stocks.

Hit harder during the early decline, altcoins also rebounded, but underperformed bitcoin The CoinDesk 20 slumped 2% in the last 24 hours, with litecoin (LTC), ripple (XRP), avalanche (AVAX) and chainlink (LINK) all dropping roughly 4%.

Crypto equities were modestly lower, but bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) was a notable underperformer, falling 5.7%.

The major U.S. stock averages tumbled 2% or more early in the session following less than stellar economic news. They retook ground throughout the day though, with the S&P 500 closing slightly in the green and the Nasdaq dipping just 0.1%.

The continuing string of lame economic data, however, has not seemed to deter U.S. President Trump from his tariff policies.

“Somebody said all the shelves are going to be open,” Trump said early Wednesday. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. … They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which we don’t need.”