Poop Token: A Literal Sh*tcoin for San Francisco’s Homelessness Crisis

by
Ryan Smith
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• A blockchain developer has created an appropriately titled sh*tcoin to track poop sightings in San Francisco.
• Despite its more humorous nature, the project may have some real-world applications.
• The city’s homelessness crisis remains grim.

If ever there was a sh*tcoin that lived up to its name, SF Poop Token would be it. Blockchain developer Hart Lambur has created the first-ever crypto solution to track human poop sightings in San Francisco.

The SF Poop Token was conceived at the recent ETHWaterloo event, a hackathon that encourages developers to collaborate in building decentralized applications on top of Ethereum.

According to Lambur, the light-hearted project could incentivize the local government to issue coins on the basis of committing resources to fix the problem.

If the issuer succeeds, they get to keep the profits earned from selling the tokens. Conversely, if they fail, the value of the sh*tcoins would go up:

…residents of the city of SF could buy shit coins as an “emotional hedge”—they make money if the problem gets worse.

Poop Token Economics

You can already buy SF Poop Tokens on Uniswap. For obvious reasons they’re only available through one of Ethereum’s test networks, designated Rinkeby.

Lambur used data from San Francisco’s SF311 database to chart the 30-day rolling average of excrement sightings in the city since 2014. He humorously describes the trend as, “Sh*t is going up!”:

In terms of the economics, Lambur suggests that the payoff would be net positive for both the city and its residents. If the city gets its act together, they keep the profits and residents have a cleaner city. If they don’t, well at least residents will make some money in the process:

Say the city issues $10mm sh*t coins at 3000 sh*ts per month. If the city can reduce the rate to 1500 per month, they would make $5mm in “profits”; conversely, if it doubles (to 6000 per month), the city would owe the sh*t coiners another $10mm.

Despite being more of a joke, the proof-of-concept does provide some interesting applications. Other projects that Lambur suggests are worth exploring include, for example, tracking public transport delays on subways or even at airlines.

San Francisco’s Homeless Crisis

Whimsical cryptocurrency projects aside, the housing crisis in the city remains grim. Many residents are struggling despite Trump’s claims of the ‘greatest economy ever’.

San Francisco, considered to be one of America’s premier tourism hot spots, has seen a spike of 12% in homelessness over the past year alone. The result has led to the creation of a public works team known as the “poop patrol.”

What’s worse, the local recession-blind Federal Reserve believes that the longest-running US. economic expansion in history will continue unabated. When it ends, and it surely will, what effects will that have on the poop-laden streets of San Fran?