San Francisco Onion Futures Company
- ID
- 26336
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 19 Sep 2026, 12:23 PM
- Fetched
- 21 Sep 2026, 12:28 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://onionfutures.com/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 1.5
- Created
- 21 Sep 2026, 12:33 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
A website called the San Francisco Onion Futures Company sells private, transferable contracts for future physical delivery of yellow onions, priced via a proprietary algorithm that recalculates daily. It claims legality by avoiding the definition of a 'board of trade' under 7 U.S. Code § 13-1, which bans onion futures on organized exchanges. Contracts are managed via unique keys that can be transferred between owners, with physical delivery in San Francisco, Toronto, Seattle, and Chicago.
Why it matters
This is a clever legal-hack art project, not something builders need to act on. The only mildly interesting technical detail is the key-based contract transfer system (voiding old keys on ownership change), but it's too thin to learn from. Skip unless you want a laugh for the meetup.
Discussion angle
How far can you push 'not technically an exchange' as a product design pattern, and what does the key-transfer mechanism get right or wrong compared to real digital contract systems?