In this article, I will explain my thoughts on why Gridcoin's price has the potential to explode, and my prognosis for its future. I'm relatively new to the world of cryptocurrency (Gridcoin reeled me in), and by no means an expert, so a) bear with me through the lack of terminology expertise. b) Don't take the following as expert financial advice. It's just my personal opinion and thoughts on the matter.

First, a TL;DR of Gridcoin (Skip if acquainted)

So, you know how Bitcoin is mined by having your PC/miner solve hashes? This uses a lot of energy to accomplish... securing the network and making you a bit of money. Or a lot of money, if you started early. With Gridcoin, your hardware is crunching too, but not to solve otherwise useless hashes. Your machine's spare power (whatever amount you're not using yourself at any given time (or whatever amount you defined)) is put to compute for science, trying to find cures for cance, clean energy sources, or mapping asteroids - whatever projects you choose! By running BOINC, your PC joins a network of other computers and forms a sort of supercomputer that can be used for free for all kinds of (scientific) tasks. BOINC has existed for a long time, and I have been participating for some years because I like to support the causes, but then Gridcoin came along as a way to reward participants with actual money instead of just points, based on their impact on the projects and I was immediately sold. Well not immediately, but after doing due diligence and becoming convinced it was not a scam. So in short: Gridcoin pays you for donating your PC's spare computing power to science. Or you can just buy some and leave it in your wallet to accumulate interest. You don't have to use BOINC. More in depth information can be found on the official Gridcoin homepage. Okay, on to the main part:

Predictions for Gridcoin's Future (-Price)

My cautiously otimistic, but in my humble opinion logical predictions, that is. Gridcoin has very recently rebounded from the the Bitcoin crash, returning to its pre-crash value as not all altcoins have done, which is a good sign in terms of its resilience I believe. Also recently, it had a bit of a price correction upwards (x2) after steadily rising for some time. So there is already a clear upwards trend here. ![](https://steemitimages.com/DQme63V7qTdMEogVjajZgYxQGK1GJpsQXoC6noyyrZdsP2j/grc%20chart.png) Graph source. So, why should you still hold on to your Gridcoin? Or invest? Or start boincing and earn some?

The value of monthly gridcoin payouts is more or less related to average electricity costs of mining/boincing. As such, a month's payout should roughly cover your electricity bill, and should do so in the future as well. With more people joining BOINC and/or Team Gridcoin, each miner's monthly share will decrease, but the value of that payout should stay the same, hence the price must increase. People usually should not want to sell their gridcoin under the value of the electricity they needed to mine said coins. This makes for steady gains as more people join Team Gridcoin.
The mentioned Team Gridcoin is also one of the main things holding Gridcoin back. Or the requirement to join the Team, that is. See, currently you need to literally join Team Gridcoin on BOINC to mine GRC. The problem is many people are attached to their teams and the promise of offsetting their electricity bill is not enough to make them switch sides. Here comes the kicker: We're planning to remove said requirement in the near future. There is currently a bounty of 200k GRC ($7'000 at the moment) for making that happen.
Team Gridcoin currently consists of ca. 10'000 members. There are about 4.3 million BOINC users in total, roughly 350'000 of which are active. Gridcoin's price will increase with additional members/payouts to be made. If the team requirement is lifted... you do the math. While you crunch the numbers, let me tell you what it looks like in my head:

I think it's not unrealistic that within a month of the team requirement being lifted, 10 times more people will partake of Gridcoin. If you're already boincing for free, it just makes sense to put a little bit of effort into setting up a wallet and henceforth receive monetary rewards for your computer's hard work. Heck, that's how I was easily roped in and I was a total crypto newb back then. If the hurdle of having to quit your team is gone, there's no more reason not to. Plus, many more people might start boincing at all, once they hear of the financial incentive, which is just great for science. At that point, GRC's value will have increased tenfold (to $0.35). Surely, this will not have gone unnoticed, and while more and more boincers opt in, investors will buy in. Within a year of lifting the team requirement, I think it's entirely feasible Gridcoin will have passed the dollar mark. Or it might crash and burn tomorrow. There is no way to know for sure. I'm holding on to my coins, and if I had the funds, I would buy more. Like I said at the beginning , I'm no expert. Just some guy who loves the idea of Gridcoin, had a strong gut feeling Tesla, Netflix, Solar City and Amazon stock would make for great investments some years ago, and felt the same about mining Bitcoin but shied away from how complicated it all sounded back then. Well, I'm not gonna miss the train this time. What will you do?