What distinguishes Gridcoin from Bitcoin?
Answer: A new Gridcoin is minted each time scientific research is performed.
Most cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are mined by arbitrary computational work. Gridcoins, however, are minted by putting idle computers to work using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), which includes research around tasks like curing diseases, studying climate change, discovering astronomical objects, cryptography, drug discovery engineering, and many others. Gridcoin rewards those who donate their idle computational power to science with the gift of digital currency.
