GridCoin is the open source cryptocurrency operating to sustain the project and a platform called BOINC. The idea is to allow anybody to volunteer a certain amount of their computing power to the system in general, and to allow to sell that power for a certain number of rewards. Projects in development around the world are in dire need of processing and computing power. In fact, it is one of the great crisis of the 21st century business. Instead of buying out entire hangars worth of computers, what BOINC offers is a free and open environment, where people could simply share the processing power they are not currently using, get paid for it, and the projects that need that power would cut costs on the storage and buying computers for that power, in a very considerable way. The project itself is based in the United States, where the problem of unused processing power is even more prevalent, since the very phones so commonly used by the Americans have more processing power than any one person could ever need in a phone.