Sunday, July 12, 2020
I am participating in data crunching projects for BOINC, and I have been for the better part of twenty years. This started as crunching data for SETI@home and was followed by many other projects. Currently, I have been working on covid-19 treatments. Being awarded points has always been somewhat interesting, at least as far as comparing myself to other data crunchers, and it is satisfying to some extent to be helping out by doing science that might not be done otherwise, cheaply anyway. But there is a new way to go that merges researching with something a bit more interesting than earning points.
I tried my hand (very ineptly) at investing in bitcoin a while back. My initial small investment doubled within a few days. I was stoked. I was ready to invest more. And then the bottom fell out of the market, and I got out while I was still above water (barely). I concluded that investing was not the way to go, but maybe if you could cheaply (like any of it is cheap) get a bitcoin mining computer, at least the coin you generated would be yours. But, having looked into it a bit, it is expensive to get into, and the price of bitcoin is still – whatever it is. You are buying something that doesn’t exist. What value could it have?
Taking a bit of the uncertainty out of the equation, there is a new (to me anyway) BOINC manager site that allows you to merge your computer research CPU time with “mining” Gridcoin. How does it work? Who knows. I only just found it and set it up (hopefully).
There are certain projects on BOINC that have been OK’d for use with this mining tool. You do the research you are doing anyway, and as your computer hums away, you build up credit, which hopefully means “cash” at some point.
I will let you know.
I am skeptical. But, it doesn’t cost anything to find out. And, I haven’t quit my day job.
Memory is the Key 