Today I mined (or rather earned) my first CureCoin. It took a bit longer than I expected.
CureCoin is a reward you get when you use the Folding@Home software to use excess computing power to simulate proteins and help researchers find cures to diseases, while being part of team CureCoin. Your computing power results get converted to Points. And for your contribution of points you get a piece of a CureCoin – eventually earning an entire coin.
Here is their description of what CureCoin is:
Network security from hashing is good. Making money is great. Curing Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, preventing viruses, and designing next-level pharmaceuticals is awesome. What if we could put these together, to build a coin secured and run by crypto, mined with SHA256, and supported by cancer-curing research? Announcing Curecoin!
I first tried the Folding@Home software on my laptop and it ran ok, however it did not recognize the built in GPU. If I had just relied on this laptop – it would be another month before I would have earned that precious CureCoin. So I tried it on another cruddy laptop and to my surprise the GPU was recognized. It had better results, but still would have taken weeks longer. I finally tried it on my low-end gaming PC and that definitely sped things up! However, even with this computer it takes quite a while to get a single CureCoin. I even managed to get the Folding@Home client running on my Raspberry Pi – I am sure that will contribute the least of all – but it was fun to do none the less. I’ll post instructions on how to do that shortly. At any rate, between all these setups I finally worked my way up to a full coin!
Clearly, CureCoin isn’t about getting rich or even making some spare change, but rather it is about you becoming part of a cause and helping solve some real-world problems. If you just want CureCoin quickly I would check the exchanges, or follow CureCoin on twitter. They occasionally do Airdrops – in a past Airdrop I received 30 CureCoin!
In addition to running the Folding@Home software and joining team Curecoin they have a store where you can purchase cloud mining – it will cost more than the coins you receive though. It’s more like an immediate way to donate to them I think. They also have gift cards you can purchase – they use CoinPayments.net and you can pay with CureCoin, Bitcoin and other altcoins.
