Slashdot Mirror
CureCoin Cryptocurrency Enters Third Year of Helping Disease Researchers (curecoin.net)
Millions of people have donated their unused computer power as part of "a global movement of teams and individuals committed to Protein Folding research," according to a special anniversary update at CureCoin.net. And after two years, CureCoin is now the fourth-largest contributor to Stanford's massively distributed computing project for disease research. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
CureCoin rewards citizen scientists participating in life science research through Stanford's Folding@home... It's actually very easy to participate -- basic account setup can take as little as 20 minutes, and you're contributing computing power with a PC or Mac while earning the tokens...
CureCoin uses a blockchain token called CURE as the means of reward. There is a growing market and exchange network for the coin. Occasional market volatility puts penny stocks to shame -- which if you are risk averse, makes it fun to watch nonetheless.
Sounds more useful than that cryptocurrency which rewards its users for participating in denial-of-service attacks.
CureCoin uses a blockchain token called CURE as the means of reward. There is a growing market and exchange network for the coin. Occasional market volatility puts penny stocks to shame -- which if you are risk averse, makes it fun to watch nonetheless.
Sounds more useful than that cryptocurrency which rewards its users for participating in denial-of-service attacks.
It means you can pay for part or all of your electric bill and to fund your equipment and maintenance (especially if you do "merge-folding" with FoldingCoin, you can look that up). It means you can exchange CURE for BTC on three exchanges (ultimately for cash), or you can trade it for goods and services on the evolving CoinPayments.net (you can even buy a motorized scooter for it now). Unlike some other reward systems, you are not limited to the amount of CURE you can hold or exchange ... however only 7488 coins are released on a daily basis (to folders). There is an additional ~1870 coins awarded to Proof of Work SHA-256 miners to secure the network although the coin has been utilizing a larger percentage of Proof of Stake in liue of PoW to secure the network over the past year). After the first four years, those rewards will be cut in half and continue to be cut in half every 4 years for the next 100 years based on the current mining model.
The coin has a built-in controlled supply (which roughly equates to a precious metals mining paradigm over a 100 year period) This means the more people fold for CURE, the more computational research each coin represents (therefor increasing competition for the coin!!!). You can also donate the coins to help fund additional research outside of Stanford on their website. Based on some of the latest on bitcoin talk, they are working on making those coins tax deductible. CureCoin is producing over 100,000,000 PPD (and they've only been around for 2+ years).
So that's why you may want to 'bother'. Competition absolutely SUPERCHARGES research progress - without the need to resort to "corporate philanthropy".
If you're folding proteins anyway, CureCoin will not make your electric bill go up. Ask yourself how much time have you wasted online fighting political battles with invisible foes, or playing "Battlefield" til the wee hours of the morning. Even if you don't like the CureCoin idea - spending 10 minutes to just create a FAH account, and folding using Chrome NaCl could save lives in the not too distant future. But I'm certainly biased.