Bigwigs have spontaneously come forward, with 100 million yuan of capital entering the market. Will you follow Grin's trend?

“Grin mining will not be profitable, especially early on.”

“We conservatively estimate that $100 million of venture capital has been invested in dedicated investment vehicles to mine Grin,” said the former Coin Capital partner in an interview with Coindesk.

No one expected that this project, which was launched at the end of 2016, would become so popular in the domestic and international markets in 2019.

“My mining friends and I have been in a state of confusion these days. No one knows why it has suddenly become popular.” Miner A continued: “I tried it for a day with a 1070 8G graphics card and mined about 3.5 Grin, which costs about 7 or 8 yuan each.”

On the first day of listing, Grin’s highest price reached $261.65, but it plummeted after that, falling below $5 in less than 24 hours. Even so, miners’ profits are still considerable.

1. Grin: Anonymous coin regarded as Bitcoin 2.0

In the early morning of January 16, Grin’s mainnet was successfully launched, officially launching an idealistic social experiment focusing on anonymous payments.

Martian said on Weibo: "Grin may be the most hardcore digital currency in recent years, the one closest to Bitcoin fundamentalism; small blocks, pure anonymity, anti-censorship, cypherpunks, and apoliticalism are once again making waves."

At the end of 2016, when the ICO boom was just beginning, the Grin team did not follow the same strategy of other projects to “raise money first and then do things”. It also did not accept other forms of financing, and the entire project was entirely dependent on donations. Perhaps this is why Grin took its time to officially launch the project two years later.

In addition, the project has no pre-mining and other privileges, and all tokens can only be exchanged by face.

Grin brings the rules of the game back to the early days of Bitcoin - everyone is on the same starting line, and everyone can get it by mining instead of buying it.

An anonymous partner of an investment company said: "Grin is the closest thing to Bitcoin. In the minds of many investors, Grin is a bit like 'Bitcoin 2.0' ."

Like Bitcoin, Grin also uses the POW consensus mechanism. The difference is that in order to avoid the computing power monopoly problem like Bitcoin, the Grin team set the initial mining algorithm to be "anti-ASIC", allowing graphics card miners to become the main mining body.

Grin is the first project to use the MimbleWimble underlying protocol. The MW protocol was originally proposed to improve Bitcoin and was supported by many crypto-punks, crypto-geeks, and developers, but was eventually shelved for various reasons. This gave Grin the opportunity to emerge.

This protocol focuses on the interchangeability and scalability of tokens, and can also ensure the anonymity of addresses and funds under the premise of system security. Grin has now become synonymous with the MW protocol, and it is highly anticipated, and many people in the community hope that it can become the second Bitcoin.

2. Why are old projects so popular?

As we learned in the previous article, Grin is not a new project, but why is it so popular at this time?

Some people speculate that there is a person behind the scenes. First, Ethereum is upgrading, and miners' profits have declined after the upgrade; second, the bear market is long, and miners are worried about shutting down their computers, and Grin's mechanism that is friendly to "graphics card miners" can help them overcome this difficulty; third, Grin's mainnet was launched, so there was a lot of media and big V publicity. In the absence of factual basis, this inference is slightly conspiracy theory.

Some people say that it is because the bear market has lasted too long, and even a small hot spot can be magnified . Mr. Y, an old miner, said: "I also found it inexplicably popular. Maybe there are no hot spots in the market, and even mining pools are looking for hot spots." After more than a year of bear market, everyone's desire to make money has become stronger. It would be best if they could get a share of the hot spots.

However, if you turn your attention abroad, you will find that even the core developers of Bitcoin, the administrators of the Bitcoin forum, the chief maintainer of Bitcoin, and the father of smart contracts are all cheering for this project .

“Because the project does not give special treatment to the creators, this approach is innovative and it is a project with the spirit of cypherpunks,” said Jameson, a member of the Bitcoin core development team.

With advanced technology, no IC0, no pre-mining, no founder privileges, a decentralized community, and everyone starting from the same starting line, it can be said that Grin has brought us back to an era that focuses on technology and emphasizes fairness. It has become a breath of fresh air among the chaotic and profit-driven projects in the cryptocurrency world. Perhaps this is also the main reason why so many big Vs have taken the initiative to support it.

3. Can we follow this trend?

Grin’s monetary policy is the most criticized aspect of this project. Grin has no pre-mining and generates 60 tokens per minute, which is 86,400 per day. In eight months, it has exceeded the total amount of Bitcoin, and there is no upper limit.

This means that "inflation" as a percentage of existing supply will be high initially, but will gradually decrease to below 1% over time and get infinitely close to zero, but will never actually be equal to zero.

TokenGazer, a blockchain investment research organization, mentioned in its Grin mining equipment investment income analysis report:

If Grin is expected to only rank 100th in market capitalization in 12 months, then buying new mining machines will result in losses.

If Grin is expected to rank 10th in market capitalization in three months, then the newly purchased mining machines will definitely be profitable.

Many people are considering whether to join the army of Grin miners. Dovey Wan, former general manager of Danhua Capital, said: "Grin mining will not be profitable, especially in the early stages. "

If you don’t want to mine, but buy in the secondary market, we have to mention Zcash, which is also an anonymous coin. When mining was first opened, it was sold for 3,000 bitcoins per coin! As the circulation increased, its price quickly fell back. Grin is still out of stock, and its recent trend is likely to be similar to that of Zcash. It is not a wise move to enter the market in this way at this time.

In the face of the sudden "hype", Grin's core developers said in an interview that they hope Grin will be regarded as a "currency" rather than a value storage like Bitcoin. Regarding the price, he said: "If the price of Grin is unlikely to change in the future, people will be more willing to use it rather than hoard it speculatively."

Although Grin cannot avoid being "speculated" at present, we still hope that it can stick to its hardcore and punk characteristics, protect the increasingly weak fairness and privacy rights in the real world, and successfully complete this high-risk social experiment.