I started mining gridcoin around new year.
Previously I've been fiddling around with other currencies. But I got very pleased when I found out, that a coin exists that supports the BOINC network.
As with many other nerds I started BOINCing for SETI@home just in hope of finding ET with my own equipment.
What I like/love about gridcoin is the fact that your old hardware can still be used. There is really no need to go out an purchase new equipment just to get a few new coins. Also the fact that the yield for mining gridcoin is relatively high.
I started solo crunching because I thought I would get cheated by a pool. And especially when it seems that there is only one pool around for gridcoin.
But I must admit that my lack of trust in the pool has been put to shame. I have as we speak mined around 16 GRC and also gotten GRC from faucets.
So do I believe in the future of this coin. But ofcourse!
Do I expect to become a billionair crunching gridcoin. No I don't but I expect to help out the scientific community in the process.
Surely you need to do a bit of reading up before just downloading the wallet.
Especially when I used 7+ days syncing up the wallet because I kept rebuilding blocks. Because I thought that was the way to boost the synchronization of the wallet.
I have started out my journey by trading in my dogecoin and bitcoin that I earned on different faucets. The fact that you need to have at least 1000GRC in your wallet in order to stake ie. earn interest and get paid for your solo crunching seems a little daunting a first. But now that I learned to pool crunch and earning around 2 GRC a day on 5 different crappy old computers I am not worried that I will eventually get there.
Also the fact that the community is very helpful. Theres a great IRC channel where noobs like me can get some help from the get go is just perfect.
I think with the bitcoin community it is mostly everyone for themselves.
I've been thinking about starting up a youtube channel in Danish to help other danes start on their GRC journey and spread the word.
Maybe if that gets popular enough I will try to make a faucet on my own. Maybe develop an android app like the others where you earn your first GRC for watching those annoying commercials.
Best regards