Do you get real money for your credits earned and if so how?

Credits are a fun thing, used for competitions (teams or persons), success control for the efficiency of your host and stuff like that.

There has been a university that payed BOINC credits with ice cream but I guess that has been an offer for their own students - I like the idea though (as much as I like ice cream).

There is a Bitcoin BOINC project but I haven't checked what they exactly do.

p.s.: depending on your location, on the tax office and on the project it _might_ be possible to make the electricity you invested for crunching into a tax deductable donation (sorry, I'm not so sure how to word it, I hope it is understandable) - but I guess that's quite a hassle in most cases, especially as too many factors influence the ratio between the watts used and the credits earned.

Do you get real money for your credits earned and if so how?

Newly discovered asteroid will be named after yourself.

Maybe you look for something like this:
www.charityengine.com