Intro
Gridcoin is one of the most ethical cryptocurrencies around, using your idle computing power for scientific research. In this post, I would like to propose the slightly counter-intuitive idea that there might be a good way to support the coin (and hence the research that is eventually done) without offering your computer's processing power.
The idea
It all started with a simple calculation of my electricity costs. I am only using my laptop to run BOINC, so the first step is to search online for my computer and find its power consumption. I found mine here to be 20W/h. I then checked my electricity cost here (or from your electricity bill) and finally I put all these numbers in the energy use calculator.
The verdict comes out to be about $4 per month in electricity cost, which at current prices (0.05$/GRC) is about 80GRC. At the same time, my computing generates about 25GRC from proof of research. The mathematics are therefore simple: I am not covering my electricity cost.
This is of course fine, because many of gridcoin holders (including myself) are running BOINC to help the research being done, but it made me think:
Let's take the number of GRC that end up in my wallet every month as a measure of how much I have supported the BOINC research that month. How can I maximise this number? Right now, the number is +25GRC. How can I do better than that (while keeping the same cost to myself)?
The answer is of course very simple. Stop running BOINC completely and buy $4 worth of GRC every month, which will give me a +80GRC rather than a +25GRC at the same cost.
Objections
I can already hear the objections rising: "This is not helping science, you are not even doing any useful calculations!", but as a matter of fact, I think it does. A constant demand for GRC every month, like the one I propose, will (eventually) increase the price of the coin and this steady increase will bring in more people with computing power willing to produce via proof of research. The question is "Can you really convince yourself that you are actually helping science more through this indirect approach?"
I understand that simply buying the coin monthly is not as engaging (or as addictive!) as running BOINC. However, the simple measure of how many coins my wallet is "producing" every month tells me that it is actually a superior method, so that is what I will be doing from now on. The situation for me (this depends on your electricity costs) will be reversed once the price surpasses (0.16$/GRC). At that point, I will be helping science more by not buying any more and turning my processors on instead.
Comments
What I propose is quite counter-intuitive, but I think the analysis is sound. I would love therefore to hear comments from others in the community. Are you convinced? Will you do the same? If not, why? Debate is welcome.
Thanks for reading!
My solution is run BOINC on my computers at work. ;P
That is an awesome way to fuck yourself for TOS violations not only is that unethical but those machines are not yours , you do not own them nor do you pay the power costs. Both violations of BOINC TOS and the fact pointing out that you are stealing Gridcoin from the rest of us whom spend $100+USD a month and BOINC for science paying to power our OWN machines. I hope you get busted and lose your job... Great solution then huh there buddy? Someone just got busted for doing that , was a top whale with his mag in the 8000's and I hope you are next.
Someone also accused that other someone of far worse things in the same mail. It wasn't true of course, but the damage was still done.
Not paying for hardware or electricity does not automatically make you a mag thief.
I'll add that it's fine to have a discussion about ethics as far as using hardware or electricity that you technically didn't pay for. I want people to know that the Gridcoin community cares about being honest. But yeah, there's a difference between making use of idle time on a couple computers in your office, and subversively running a large scale mining operation w/o permission or consent.
Chill, it's only two computers. My supervisor knows and she's totally cool with it qualifying as "personal use". Nothing unethical there. Running BOINC on a supercomputing cluster of 10000 cores without permission...well...that's pretty far into the unethical regime, and no way I would do that. (Although, if someone is going to be unethical to that extreme ... at least it's in a "robinhood-esque" way, rather than flat-out stealing cash and spending it on coke and hookers, haha.)
Added note: I apologize if I was too cavalier. I care a lot about ethical practices within the crypto mining space and especially Gridcoin (I want Gridcoin to have a good public image). I encourage other miners to take ethics seriously as well, without necessarily taking a black-and-white "puritan" point of view.
I've thought about exactly what you're proposing several times, and at one point I considered selling one of my BOINC rigs. I didn't end up doing it; instead, I decided to keep mining but also buy more GRC :)
I think it's great that you have increased your contributions to GRC this way, but based on the arguments above, doesn't it still make sense to turn your rig off and buy GRC manually until the prive is 4-5 times higher? (I am just playing devil's advocate here, I would probably keep mining myself if I had a reasonably strong system! It is this feeling of "contributing directly" that I find very interesting and would like to understand better.)
It's true; right now I earn about 15 USD per month in GRC (excluding PoS interest) but spend about 50 in electricity costs. However, I do genuinely believe that the price of GRC will increase over time, so I haven't sold any of what I've gained from mining.
Also, something just doesn't feel right to me about turning off my rigs. Gridcoin is about more than money to me. My computations actually have some tangible meaning. That's what brought me to Gridcoin in the first place, the fact that I'm not just mindlessly grinding through SHA-256/etc all day until I find some arbitrary magic number.
If one expects GRC value rising, buying coins is economically more efficient than minting. I wonder if this will ever reverse?
On the other hand, somehow GRC minted with BOINC ... tastes better :)
Cryptos are notoriously volatile. Simply buying GRC won't help to keep its price up, as others, especially whales, may very well sell to get some short-run profit. Cryptos, like fiat currency, require real markets to give them value. Bitcoin tried to used in markets, but technical problems have doomed it (processing a transaction in hours will not do.) The first crypto to be competitive with credit card networks will have a huge advantage.
You just planted 0.23 tree(s)!
Thanks to @rufusfirefly
We have planted already 6443.53 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 18705.68
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
I think I disagree with this. It is hard for me to imagine that if everyone running BOINC tried to directly buy GRC every month, instead of paying their electricity bill, the price would not go up. No matter how volatile a market, the price is still determined by supply and demand.
The point about a whale selling is interesting, but I don't think it changes the argument. If a whale sells and the price drops, then we simply continue with our monthly purchases until the price is high enough to switch back to crunching BOINC.
The way for GRC's price to increase is to provide goods and services for sale for GRC. To sway the market to GRC requires discounts. Given a current circulation of 403,410,232.30 GRC, roughly $19,000 at current prices, this market is very limited.
I think your figure is missing several orders of magnitude...
No, it's not! I left out the context as an exercise for the reader. ;-) $US 14K was the approximate value of GRC traded in the 24 hours ending as of my post.
You just planted 0.05 tree(s)!
Thanks to @rufusfirefly
We have planted already 6775.48 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 18698.69
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
I like the experiment you have done here and I agree that it could indeed support the Gridcoin marketplace.
Have you taken into account the number of hours that BOINC is running exclusively compared to other use of the computer?
Does BOINC always run when you are actively using the computer?
I don't really use my computer that much. Maybe a couple of hours per day to check emails, so it is safe to assume that most of my consumption comes from running BOINC 24h/7.
You do make a valid point though and the numbers I mentioned should only be used as a ballpark to give you an idea. Everyone has a different system and the electricity costs also vary a lot from country to country. This is one of the reasons I have given links to the websites I used above, so that each user can do this calculation for themselves and decide how much GRC they should be buying every month instead of crunching.
In that case the power consumption calculator should give you a good estimate.
Even with other usage It is a quick way to find the maximum monthly cost of running BOINC on your hardware.