Header Image from gridcoin.us
When I first heard of Bitcoin, I was extremely curious, but ultimately disappointed. When I read that it's POW algorithm just competed for useless hashes, I was appalled. There is such a huge need for computing power globally, and to waste all of this electricity making a (then barely worthwhile) digital token seemed like such a waste.
I did some digging around and found Gridcoin, an altcoin which used Scientific Research and calculations as it's POW. Finally, with something that felt much more worthwhile to put my computer to work on. Armed with a 4 thread AMD Athlon X4, I put my parent's electricity to work mining something that almost certainly wasn't worth it.
That was over 10 years ago now, and while Crypto has spiked, I always come back to Gridcoin. It's mission of doing good for the world and the scientific community, while providing crypto as a reward always felt more honest to me than any other use of blockchain we had so far. NFTs were pointless, and other altcoins were either fringe investments, or outright scams.
I only recently found HIVE, and while I had heard of it's predecessor, I never looked into it until I started looking for ways to decentralize my life. Hive to me is the only other really useful Crypto that I've found so far. Facilitating social connections on a decentralized blockchain, resilient to any corporate influence. It feels like Gridcoin did to me then; rejecting the algorithmic and AI trappings of late Web 2, for something which has intrinsic use. Now that I am on Hive as my primary Social Media platform, It sparked a desire to get back into Gridcoin as well.
Unfortunately, my old wallet is gone. I doubt the value has soared like it would have if it were an old Bitcoin wallet. But I looked in all of my cloud storage drives, backup zip folders, and email history just to be sure. Now I get the opportunity to start from scratch. My 8 thread i3-14100 isn't in much better of a position to mine than the Athlon was, but that's not the point. Just like it was then, I get to support science while earning a little bit of crypto which won't cover the power bill. Maybe if I convert it into HBD, the 15% interest rate will make it break even. We'll have to see what the future holds for Crypto.
