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.”

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.”

Robinhood (HOOD) topped tempered analyst estimates in the first quarter of 2025, reporting adjusted earnings per share of $0.37 against forecasts for $0.33.

The popular trading platform reported $927 million in total revenue, down from $1 billion in the fourth-quarter, but beating Street expectations of $920.1 million. Crypto-related revenue was $252 million, up 100% from year-ago levels.

Transaction-based revenue of $583 million slipped 13% from $672 million in the fourth quarter.

Robinhood had seen explosive numbers in the fourth quarter, in part thanks to a surge in crypto trading amid euphoria stemming from U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential win. But the froth in crypto and traditional markets quickly reversed following Trump’s inauguration.

The company added $500 million to its existing $1 billion share repurchase program. To date, HOOD has bought back $667 million, leaving another$833 million under the authorization.

Robinhood’s monthly crypto volumes have historically shown high correlation with Coinbase’s (COIN) retail volumes, but Barclays analyst Benjamin Buddish believes the COIN will have seen a less meaningful decline in trading volumes in the first quarter.

Coinbase is reporting earnings on May 8 and is expected to post a slight decline in revenue to $2.1 billion from $2.27 billion in the previous quarter, while exchange volume is expected to have dropped to $403.8 from $439 billion, according to analysts at FactSet.

HOOD shares are down 2.2% in after hours action.