I beg to differ and am same age , come from seti@home on a k6-2 and 2 x sli voodoo 2 12mb cards with my 4mb tnt2 and extra 4mb laptop edo stick for 8mb video to watch that 3.5mhz waterfall ( ham too ) and I have been with GRC a while and you can start out solo.
You think you are going to make $1000yr ? Actually after the new version updates to exchanges levels out I should be 5x that again or there about and at $2600 for the time i have spent would cover the costs as I have a massive cluster of systems ( hp blades ). You are spreading GRC monopoly pool propaganda and hurting the new growth of our project... If you have a problem get off your lazy duff and join us , its an open project and everybody in the community other than ROB himself is equal since the foundation is a sham and Gridcoin is a cult following fork off BTC made from the source code of many coins ( sorry done some dev and porting ). You cant make a stack off your little desktop , laptop and a phone. Not right away , not with people like me whom spend all their time expanding xeon blade systems and I am a small fish , then you have dutch @ 3.8kw/H ( bit more than me) and Deltik with his multiple HP C-7000 blade enclosures and bl460-c gen 7 blades ( he hid them but I saved a copy for pastebin @ my laptop ) and you really need to scale you setup and hang around a bit , join the mumble but beware its just a think tank and your ideas will get stolen such as my " Graylist " project so be careful and don't trust anyone... Also hide your usb thumb drive in an atari st cartridge or something cloak and dagger so they don't ever find it...