Folding Forum

was not there a large thread in forum where people posted why they contribute in folding@home?

Because it pays almost as much as mining and has an altruistic "bonus", making it a more socially responsible endeavor than straight mining.

ComputerGenie wrote:it pays almost as much as mining

Thanks. I had wondered about how they compared. I have quite a while yet to break even on the hardware I've bought, at which point I'll just buy more hardware.

SteveWillis wrote:... I have quite a while yet to break even on the hardware I've bought, at which point I'll just buy more hardware.

I had started a "back-end ROI" comparison spreadsheet (for 1080vs1070 and mining vs folding), but the variables got so complex that I knew it would end up being as misused as the "projects performance database" is, so I abandoned it.

For the "average" person, there is a negligible profit difference between folding and mining (usually the only time mining comes out "far ahead" is when someone counted outliers into the averages).

If you get into automated "profit switching" and automated trading, mining will win out; however, one has to weigh the man-hours of writing such code, which puts the favor back to "even" (for any time-frame under 24 months).

I hope that FoldingCoin and CureCoin get more people into folding@home or encourage existing folders to build more rigs.
The many donors are a free super computer so it is fair that they get something back now and not only in a future where some disease gets cured with the help of the folding results. And I don't like the idea of pure mining where only electricity is transferred into coins using GPUs - doesn't make sense for me.

My motivation is more a nerd one: My GPUs don't have anything else to do.

This question was also asked on folding reddit some time ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Folding/commen ... _you_fold/

foldy wrote:I hope that FoldingCoin and CureCoin get more people into folding@home or encourage existing folders to build more rigs.

IMO, CC is on its way to being another throwaway when it switches to full POS.