Most people in most countries are not able to set aside a computer to secure the network. Last time I ran the gapcoin wallet, a few years ago, it was far more intensive than most wallets, running 99% cpu and still taking a vast amount of time to download if I recall. So when a person asks how to get some gapcoin, first ask them if they are in a poor country or a rich country.
A simple Atom based netbook consumes next to nothing. Gapcoin sync is slow because prime gap verification is much slower than PoW hash verification of most algos.
#SinBad, absolutely no idea where you are coming from.
Yes, like a lot of coins, initial sync is quite slow, but once done, you can "secure" the network on a very low powered device. Or using just1 thread of a multicore PC.
As for mining, there is a standalone cpu miner, AMD gpu miner, a pool, or you can simple "setgenerate true 1" using just 1 core...so i think that should cover most senarios.
I bought an all in one mb with cpu/gpu, consumes 14 watt and mines a small amount of gapcoin (
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-E350N-WIN8-rev-10#ov (2cores), or
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-E3800N-rev-1x#kf(2cores 4 threads)) just don't expect to make many coins per day...
To be fair, you could have the wallet / mine on a RaspberryPi, or PiZero...
Somebody asked if there was another way to get gapcoin aside from mining or buying.
When gapcoin started 99% of people who heard about coins were in developed countries and/or had a computer.
Now there are a lot of people in many countries starting to hear about coins and probably half or more of people who have heard of crypto do not own any device beyond a very cheap cellphone or mobile. There is no way for them to mine and no way for them to buy. That might be the situation of the person who posted above.
Coins that can be either mined or otherwise generated on mobile devices have a rapidly growing market, even aside from the powerful political types that promote making coins more accessible.
Gapcoin is a hard coin to run, unless the wallet has been massively streamlined in the last few years. There are some coins very streamlined, fast synch and minimal resources, gapcoin not there.