A San Francisco site sells private onion futures, banned on US exchanges since 1958

A website calling itself the San Francisco Onion Futures Company is offering private contracts for the future physical delivery of yellow onions — a trade that US law has banned on regulated exchanges since 1958. Orders are placed through a form on the site, and prices are listed by delivery month: October 2026 at $9.39, November at $3.52, December at $8.26, January 2027 at $6.99, February at $8.91 and March at $4.12.

A contract, not a market

The company states that each month's contract price is recalculated daily at midnight San Francisco time using what it describes as a proprietary algorithm. The site lists no minimum order and no fee schedule. A single order form is on offer, and an existing contract can be updated through a management page using the key issued at purchase.

Delivery is arranged month by month. In the first week of each contract's delivery month, a representative contacts the registered owner to arrange handover, usually with a list of possible times and locations. If the owner is unavailable for any of them, or lives outside the primary delivery areas — San Francisco, Toronto, Seattle and Chicago, the last through a partner called For Our Futures — delivery may be handled by a third party at no extra charge. The company states that it offers no refunds and no cash settlement, and that even a failed delivery is not refunded.

The 1958 onion ban

Onion futures were outlawed in the United States after the traders Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga cornered the onion market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1955. Congress responded with the Onion Futures Act, signed in August 1958, which today sits at 7 U.S. Code § 13-1. The rule bars contracts for the sale of onions for future delivery on, or subject to the rules of, any board of trade in the United States.

The San Francisco Onion Futures Company's own FAQ answers the question of legality with "yes, to the best of our knowledge", arguing that it is not a board of trade — defined in the law, it notes, as an organised exchange or other trading facility. The company says it sells contracts privately to individual buyers and operates neither an exchange nor a secondary market.

Keys, transfers and refunds

Each contract comes with a unique key. Passing that key to someone else lets the recipient update the registered contact and delivery details, which voids the old key and reissues the contract under a new one, so a previous owner cannot change the information back. Registered delivery information can never be viewed from a key, according to the site, so sharing one does not expose the holder's details. Contracts can be resold up until the start of their delivery month, and anyone who wants to act as a delivery partner in another region is invited to write to [email protected].