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What is Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)? | Beginner’s Guide

What is Groestlcoin (GRS COIN) - 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.

What Is Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

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.
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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 (GRS Coin) Work?
  • What are the benefits of Groestlcoin (GRS Coin)?
  • Team & Progress
  • Trading
  • Where to Buy Groestlcoin (GRS Coin)?
  • Where to Store Groestlcoin (GRS Coin)?
  • GRS Wallet
  • What is the future of Groestlcoin (GRS Coin)?
  • How is Groestlcoin (GRS Coin) different from other cryptos?
  • Should you Invest in Groestlcoin (GRS Coin)
  • Conclusion

How Does Groestlcoin (GRS COIN) 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 Coin samourai interface on android
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.

What are the benefits of Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

GRS Technology

  1. Groestlcoin was the first coin to apply the Grøstl-512 hashing algorithm. This innovative new algorithm is completely resistant to ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) cards. These cards were developed specifically to mine PoW coins with algorithms like the SHA-256 hash, like Bitcoin. This has caused the BTC blockchain network to be swamped with mining farms of ASIC cards, making it impossible for any solo miner with a sole GPU or CPU setup, no matter how powerful, to gain any meaningful profit from mining BTC.

  2. Since Grøstl-512 is ASIC resistant, CPU and GPU miners can mine freely on the network, which results in a fair and unbiased blockchain with true decentralization. Infact, the algorithm has been optimized so that GPUs actually consume less power, and emit less heat and consume less energy when performing hashing calculations. This makes the GRS network much less detrimental to the environment and extremely power efficient.

  3. The hybrid PoW/PoS mechanism allows GRS to have a very stable, lean, and secure blockchain that is not very power hungry. The block reward, initially 25 GRS per block, is now fixed at 5 GRS per block, with no halving. This leads to a much more manageable expansion in network difficulty. This is unlike coins like BTC, whereas the rewards keep halving, raising the difficulty exponentially as more work has to be done proportionally by the nodes to get the same amount of coins.

  4. GRS was the first coin to release SegWit live on its blockchain, increasing the security of transactions performed on the blockchain immensely. SegWit is short for Segregated Witness, which fixes many known issues with the BTC code base, such as transaction malleability and blockchain scalability. SegWit does this by increasing the block size limit, which in turn increases the network capacity and its ability to support miners as well as secondary applications such as DApps or smart contracts on top of the blockchain.

  5. Groestlcoin was also one of the first coins to support the Lightning Network technology, which allows GRS to have instant transactions regardless of block confirmation times, scalability up to billions of transactions per second, extremely low fees, and cross-blockchain transactions.

Key Features

  1. Fair network - GRS is one of the few coins on the market to be completely resistant to being overpowered by ASIC miners and mining farms. This allows for a truly decentralized and peer-to-peer network that is fairly distributed amongst all nodes in the blockchain. This is in stark contrast to other PoW coins like BTC who are dominated by ASIC miners, making GPU and CPU mining not feasible. The unique Dark Gravity Wave 3 difficulty readjustment algorithm readjusts the difficulty after each block, making the blockchain dynamic and responsive to the current load on the network and its total hashing power.

  2. Up-to-date code base - Despite being relatively little-known, the GRS team has been frequent and consistent in pushing updates and upgrades to the Groestlcoin code base. GRS was one of the pioneers in many aspects of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency world, such as being one of the first coins to implement ASIC resistance, the first to implement SegWit and support for the Lightning Network.

  3. Privacy features - The ‘Samourai’ wallet allows for completely private and anonymous transactions over the GRS blockchain. It also has support for VPNs and the TOR network. This makes GRS a truly ‘all-in-one’ coin that is scalable, secure, anonymous, and fairly distributed.

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.

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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 in 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 Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

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.

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 Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

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.

GRS Wallet

The GRS wallet can be downloaded from its official website[1].

What is the future of Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

Price History

Groestlcoin (GRS COIN) Price History
  1. GRS managed to remain under the radar for quite a few years despite its robust technology and innovative features.

  2. This is due to the development team spending no money marketing the coin, with the philosophy that word-of-mouth and innovative features will attract users gradually. Instead, they channeled funds into active development.

  3. Due to the Bitcoin blockchain and most BTC-based coins becoming overpowered with ASIC miners, more and more people have been flocking to fairer mined coins such as GRS.

How is Groestlcoin (GRS COIN) different from other cryptos?

  1. Consistent Development - Despite being relatively under the radar for quite some time, the dedicated development team of GRS has never stopped pushing out regular feature upgrades and additions, updates, and security features to the code base. This is different from most other altcoins where the developer(s) usually move on to other projects after a few years pass, leaving it up to the community to continue the development of the coin. Instead of spending money on marketing the coin, GS funnels all funds into ensuring a stable and frequent update schedule, relying on their innovative features to attract users.

  2. State of the art code - GRS is one of the most technologically advanced cryptos out there, with continuous updates being pushed by the development team frequently. GRS was the first coin to enable SegWit and support for the Lightning Network on its blockchain, even before giants like BTC and ETH. GRS also was one of the first coins to enable true privacy with the help of the TOR network, and the first cryptocurrency to promote a fair and truly decentralized blockchain by being resistant to ASIC miners and multipools.

  3. All-in-one coin - GRS is one of the few coins where one can find almost all of the best features of coins like BTC and ETH rolled into one. GRS has a secure and truly decentralized blockchain, ASIC resistance, SegWit and Lightning Network support, a unique, custom hashing algorithm, and an efficient and optimized hybrid PoW/PoS network. It also focuses on privacy, security, stability, and keeping itself on the cutting edge of blockchain technology, making it very different from other altcoins who usually fall into obscurity.

Should you Invest in Groestlcoin (GRS COIN)?

  1. GRS has recently seen a rise in popularity, with most CPU and GPU miners moving away from networks like BTC, where ASIC miners have completely saturated the mining pool.

  2. With its robust features, focus on privacy, and innovative technology, GRS is a very lucrative choice for these miners and has the possibility to be the next big coin that hits the market.

  3. While investing in any cryptocurrency is subject to their inherent volatile nature, the immense market potential of Groestlcoin, along with its pioneering technology and dedicated development team, make it a very strong consideration for investment.

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.

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