Real Shitcoin: South Korea halts digital currency payments for toilet visits

The government of South Korea has halted the BeeVi toilet research programme, under which students at a local institute received digital currency.

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Presented in July 2021, the Science Walden project proposed to turn human excreta into methane and to reward users with the Ggool coin.

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The professor behind the initiative Cho Jae-weon told that in February this year the further development of Science Walden and the associated payment system Standard Money (FSM) had stopped.

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“Investors probably decided that they had provided enough backing for the project and that it should stand on its own. However, the philosophy of this currency remains markedly different from that of other existing coins,” he said.

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The BeeVi toilets were located on the campuses of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. In a dedicated laboratory, excreta were processed into biogas to generate electricity.

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For using the toilet, students received 10 Ggool per day. The tokens carried a negative interest rate of 7%. This was meant to force holders to liquidate the assets regularly for fear of losing purchasing power.

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The coin was accepted in stores on campus, but that option disappeared from early 2022.

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Professor Cho continues to say that megacities could benefit from this technology by using the processed gas for heating or cooking.

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However, he acknowledged that this would require significant investment in infrastructure.

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ForkLog previously reported that British farmer Philip Hughes is mining Ethereum using electricity obtained in the processing of cow manure.

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