Tutorial – How To Generate Bitcoin Using Your PC On Autopilot Via Gridcoin

If you are new to bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, you may wish to have at least a few thousands of satoshis to give the payment system a try. Throughout this tutorial, I will show you a unique way to generate cryptocurrency, that you can easily convert to bitcoin on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges, using just your laptop and an internet connection, on auto-pilot.

I will show you how to donate your computing power and earn Gridcoin in return through a simple-to-follow tutorial.

What is Gridcoin?

Gridcoin is the first cryptocurrency to offer an algorithm that equally incentivizes and cryptograpically validates solving BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) hosted work. In other words, Gridcoin’s framework provides a decentralized network that can be virtually used to perform any form of computing problems e.g. CPU, GPU, Sensor,…etc.

BOINC is an open source computing grid or framework that collectively combines the computing power of all individual participating machines for scientific research purposes e.g. map the Milky way, treat cancer/Ebola/Aids/ malaria, decipher enigma codes…etc. Gridcoin incentivizes BOINC computation via the Distributed Proof of Research (DPOR) mechanism, which represents a combination with proof-of-stake and proof-of-BIONC. Proof-of-work is not utilized by Gridcoin’s protocol, which renders Gridcoin’s blockchain far more energy friendly than all other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.

To mine gridcoin, or in other words, donate your computing power to participate in one of BOINC’s projects, follow the following steps:

Download and install the BOINC software on your PC.

1. Visit this link, to download the BOINC software. The software is available for Windows, MacOs and Linux operating systems, but for the purpose of this tutorial, we will install in on Windows. You have 2 choices; to either download and install BOINC alone or download and install BOINC and VirtualBox. It is recommended to download and install both, because VirtualBox is mandatory to be able to participate in some projects.

2. Launch the BOINC Manager application after successfully installing it. As shown on the below snapshot, you won’t have any projects added to the interface.

3. Choose a project to participate in by donating your computing power.

4. After picking up a project, you will prompted to enter your email and create a password

5. After entering your email and password, you will be ready to start donating your computing power. We chose the MilkyWay project for purpose of this tutorial and as shown on the below snapshot, the status is “running” which means that everything is working fine.

Important Notes

a. Note that the email address you entered links BOINC’s work done by your computer to Gridcoin, so it is recommended to use the same email address for all BOINC projects you participate in as well as in Gridcoin’s configuration file, which we will discuss later on.

b. Each project you participate in has to be connected to Gridcoin via joining the team Gridcoin.

c. You will only be incentivized for participating in whitelisted projects.

d. You can add BOINC projects via one of two methods; using manual setup to add one project at a time, or using an account manager to speed up this process. We will use BAM account manager for this turotial.

Creating a BAM Account and Linking It to Your BOINC App:

1. Create a BAM account via visiting this link. As shown on the below screenshot, you will have to enter your email address, pick a username and password and enter your country. Wait for the email confirmation after registration, click the confirmation link to activate your account and then login.

2. From the side menu, click on the “Sign-up for projects and click on the ‘Create account” icon for every project you want to participate in as shown on the below screenshot.

3. Now, you have to join team “Gridcoin” for each project you participate in by doing the following:

a. Go to the “Team” page by clicking on its link from the side menu on the left.

b. Check the box in the 3rd column, for each project you want to participate in.

c. Click the “Change/Join” button on the bottom of the projects’ list.

d. On the pop-up text field that appears, enter “Gridcoin” and then click the “Search” button.

e. This will now just show the chosen projects, with their respective results for the “Gridcoin” team search query in a dropdown box.

f. Choose the “Gridcoin” team in the dropdown menu of each project and then click the “Change/join team” button.

g- Click the “back to overview” button.

4. Now click on “My projects” on the “BAM!” menu on the left, and select the project(s) that you want all your hosts to connect to by clicking the “Attach new host by default” icon. To make sure that your machine(s) has connected successfully, you will see a green tick in the “Attach” column when you click on the project’s name link, as shown on the below screenshot.

6- Now, attach your BOINC client to your account on BAM! via the following instructions:

a. On your BOINC manager, start the wizard by clicking the appropriate button from the options under “Tools” as shown on the below screenshot.

b. Select the “Use account manager” radio-button and then click the “Next” button, as shown on the below screenshot

c. Choose “Use account manager” and then click the “Next” button.

d. Enter the URL of the account manager, or click its name if it is present in the list of choices.

e. Enter your email or username and your password and then click the “Next” button.

Done, you are now connected and ready to rock and roll!

Setting Up The Gridcoin Research Client (Wallet):

To be able to generate Gridcoin for donating your computing power to the network, you have to install the Gridcoin research client or wallet alongside the BOINC client. Here is how to do that:

1. Download the Gridcoin Research client by clicking here

2. Run the downloaded file, and proceed by clicking “Next”, once the setup process has begun

3. Now, you can select the folder for installation of the wallet, but it is highly recommended to keep the default chosen folder. Note that if you choose a different destination folder, you will have to specify your chosen location in the gridcoin.conf file.

4. Click “Next” on the following window and once installation is completed, press the “close” button, to exit the installation window.

5. After installation is complete, you have to go to the Gridcoin installation folder and do the following:

a. Place a shortcut for the gridcoinresearch.exe on your desktop.

b. Right click on the desktop shortcut you created and click on “preferences”.

c. On the “preferences” window, go to the “Compatibility” tab and then tick the “Run this program as administrator” box as shown on the below screenshot. Click “Apply” and then close the window.

6. Now run the wallet via double clicking on the desktop shortcut, if any firewall window shows up, you have to allow Gridcoin’s client past it.

7. When the client starts, you will be prompted to enter the email you used for registration at BOINC, as you may notice on the below screenshot. Note that your email will remain private and will not be broadcast to the network. Never share your email with network users, as if they have your email address, they can receive new rewards on your behalf. After entering your email and clicking “OK”, you will be prompted with a window that states that a new configuration file has been created successfully; press “OK” to continue.

Synchronization of the Blockchain and Acquiring Gridcoin for Donating Your Computing Power:

Before being able to receive Gridcoins for your proof-of-research (PoR) rewards, your wallet has to be synchronized, or in other words, you will have to download the full up-to-date version of the Gridcoin blockchain, until you get a green tick beside the word “Wallet” on the wallet’s user interface.

Acquiring Some Gridcoins:

Before being able to register your CPID in DPOR’s system, you have to have a positive balance of Gridcoins, as you have to advertise a beacon to the network via a transaction that will cost you a very small fee. Note that to mint Gridcoins via proof-of-staking (this is a different process that what we are doing here), you need to also have a positive amount of Gridcoins. The DPOR system uses ResearchAge to reward participants on top of the blocks they mint.

Note: Your balance doesn’t affect the amount you get paid for donating your computing power, it just affects how often you are paid.

You can acquire Gridcoins to start over from exchanges such as Poloniex and Bittrex, but if you don’t want to spend any money, you can still acquire some Gridcoins for free from:

1. Faucets such as Gridcoin Asia Faucet.

2. Join Uscore.net‘s Gridcoin newsletter and your will receive some Gridcoins for free.

3. Join #gridcoin IRC channel, where that are a few Gridcoin tipbots and you can get some coins for free.

Earning Gridcoin Via DPOR:

1. Before proceeding you have to make sure that the wallet has detected your CPID. On the wallet’s overview page, make sure that your CPID shows on the lower left messages section.

2. Register your CPID to DPOR’s system via advertising a beacon. Nore that at this point you have to have some Gridcoins as the ad will cost around (0.0011 Gridcoin).

a. Go to the debug console as shown on the below screenshot by navigating to Help- Debug Window – Console from the wallet’s client.

b. Enter the following command:

execute advertisebeacon

c. A small transaction, around 0.0001 Gridcoin, will be sent from the wallet (this is the beacon), which once confirmed, you will have to lock your wallet and then unlock it for “staking only” to start staking.

3. Wait until your CPID is added to the next superblock, as there is a new superblock added daily to register new users as well as to update user BOINC stats, so it usually takes up to 24 hours before your CPID is successfully registered to the network.

4. Sync the neural network by doing the following:

a. Go to the debug console again, as we explained above, and then enter the command:

execute syncpor2

b. If successful, the output will be “syncing” : 1

c. Go to the neural network via navigating to Advanced – Neural Network.

d. In the neural network window, a progress bar will appear showing the sync progress. When the sync process is complete, click the “Refresh” button to search for your CPID. By double clicking on your CPID’s row, you will see a breakdown calculation for every project your participate in.

5. Unlock your wallet for staking only, and with staking you will be incentivized with DPOR earnings in addition to your PoS earnings.

That’s it, you are now set up to earn Gridcoin for donating your computing power. The frequency of rewards will vary. I received 8 rewards during my first week which averaged around $1.12 cents considering current market price of Gridcoin. You can easily sell your Gridcoins on Poloniex or Bittrex.

If you have any questions, add them to the comments’ section below and I will be glad to answer them.