What Is Groestlcoin (GRS)? | Beginner’s Guide

July 12, 2018

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What Is Groestlcoin?

Groestlcoin is an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency that boasts having “almost ZERO fees.” Although the coin itself is only pseudo-anonymous (like Bitcoin), the development team has ported a wallet (Samourai) to give you full anonymity.

Like most people, your first question is probably, “What the hell is a ‘groestl’?” The cryptocurrency uses the Grøstl-512 mining algorithm, so the team aptly named the project “Groestlcoin.” Many people in the community have called for a rebranding to help with adoption though it doesn’t seem like it’ll happen.

In this guide, we get into all the essential Groestlcoin details such as:

How Does Groestlcoin Work?

Groestlcoin is strictly a cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer (p2p) payments. The coin serves the same end-goal as other transactional cryptos like Bitcoin and Litecoin but accomplishes that goal with a different set of attributes.

The Attributes

Firsts. Groestlcoin accomplished a few significant “firsts” with its feature set. It was the first coin to implement Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the first to perform a Lightning Network transaction on mainnet.

Fees. With the implementation of the Lightning Network, Groestlcoin has minimal fees. Transferring 10,000 GRS (~$6000 at the time of this writing) costs fractions of a fraction of a cent. Even if the GRS price rises 1000x, the transaction fee would be just a couple of pennies.

Fees may vary slightly depending on the wallet that you use to receive GRS, though.

Mining. Groestlcoin utilizes two rounds of Grøstl-512 for its mining algorithm. This mining algo is ASIC-resistant, for now.

Samourai. Not a direct feature of the blockchain per se, but Groestlcoin has an anonymous and private wallet, Samourai. The wallet doesn’t recycle addresses, has Tor support, and includes CoinJoin-esque transactions. The wallet also has Stealth Mode in which it disappears from your phone’s home screen, app list, and launcher.

Groestlcoin Samourai Interface on Android

GRS Supply and Blocks

There’s a maximum supply of 105 million GRS, and about 70 million are already in circulation.

Right now, Groestlcoin has a one MB block size, but the developers have stated that they’ll increase it if 80 transactions per second are too few to handle an increase in volume.

The mining reward started at 512 GRS per block with a halving that occurred every week. The payout is now 5 GRS per block and will stay at that level for the rest of Groestlcoin’s lifetime.

GroestlTip

GroestlTip is a tipping service that members of the community built for video streamers. Twitch streamers, for example, can integrate the service into their live videos to receive Groestlcoin tips from their viewers. Other than the standard network fees, there aren’t any additional charges to use the service.

Team & Progress

A developer going by the Bitcointalk username “Gruve_P” launched Groestlcoin on March 22, 2014. Since then, the team has grown to over 20 people spread all around the world. Most team members prefer to stay relatively anonymous, only sharing their first name and country of origin on the website.

The team has been consistent in releasing new versions of the platform every three months. With such consistency, it shouldn’t shock you to hear all that they’ve accomplished in the last four years.

The team activated SegWit in January 2017 and is currently working on Lightning Network releases for both their mobile and desktop wallets.

The team and community have also built eleven different Android wallets, ten different wallets for Blackberry, and three for iOS. They’ve created more than ten desktop wallets as well.

Competitors

Of course, Bitcoin is Groestlcoin’s most well-known competitor. But as the old saying goes, “Throw a stone in any direction, and you’ll be sure to hit a Groestlcoin competitor.” Okay, maybe that’s not how it goes; however, there is a seemingly infinite amount of similar projects.

You’ve got Litecoin aiming to be a more transactional-friendly version of Bitcoin. ASIC-resistant coins like Vertcoin and Bitcoin Gold share many of the same features as Groestlcoin. And, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Dash compete against Groestlcoin’s anonymous Samourai wallet.

Trading

The GRS price has been on a rollercoaster since its 2014 launch. Not a kiddie coaster, either. We’re talking full-on vomit halfway through the ride type of coaster.

The price stayed relatively flat for three years after launch staying between $0.002 and $0.003. At the beginning of 2017, however, trading started getting interesting.

The price rose from about $0.001 (~0.00000126 BTC) to over $0.35 (~0.00015 BTC) in just seven months before crashing back down to near pre-spike prices two months later. Then, almost immediately, the price jumped up to $1.18 (~0.00018 BTC) – an over 10x return in less than one week. This astronomical gain seemed to coincide with a massive increase of investor interest in ASIC-resistant coins.

Since that jump, Groestlcoin has volatilely bounced back and forth from a low of about $0.287 (~0.000043 BTC) to a high of $2.36 (~0.000142 BTC). The price at the time of this writing rests at around $0.58.

Plain and simple, increased usage will be the most significant catalyst for another price increase. The price could also see some decisive action with a rise in Bitcoin’s price.

Where to Buy GRS

You can trade BTC for GRS on Binance and Bittrex. Additionally, you can purchase GRS directly with KRW on Upbit – the most popular option worldwide with almost 80 percent of the trading volume.

If you’re not sure on how to start, take a look at our guide to buying Bitcoin.

Mining is also an option to obtain GRS. The simplest way to mine GRS is to use the Groestlcoin Easyminer. The Easyminer automatically assigns you to the Dwarfpool mining pool, but there are a few other pool options as well.

Where to Store GRS

As outlined above, you should be able to find an acceptable wallet out of the numerous ones available.

If you want to keep your wallet on your desktop, Groestlcoin Core and the Electrum GRS are both solid choices.

Maybe you’re more of a mobile user. If that’s the case, you should check out the Groestlcoin mobile wallet. Or, if anonymity is your focus, the Samourai wallet is the way to go.

Ledger and Trezor owners are in luck as well. Both will support GRS sometime this year.

Conclusion

The Groestlcoin team is aiming to improve upon the problems they see in Bitcoin. These improvements include making the cryptocurrency ASIC-resistant, nearly feeless, and at the forefront of technological advancements.

It’s hard to imagine Groestlcoin becoming the de facto crypto for transactions and payments. But, as we all know, anything is possible in crypto. A rebranding and some marketing could be what jumpstarts this project’s rise to notoriety.