Additionally, the "race" in Bitcoin is a (partial) preimage attack on a cryptographic hash algorithm. If someone truly "wins" the race in folding@home and find

Additionally, the "race" in Bitcoin is a (partial) preimage attack on a cryptographic hash algorithm. If someone truly "wins" the race in folding@home and finds an algorithmic shortcut to speed things up they've made a breakthrough in our understanding of biology and protein folding. If someone truly "wins" the race in seti@home and finds an algorithmic shortcut to speed things up they've made a breakthrough in our understanding of signal processing, possibly radio astronomy as a whole, and maybe even found something life changing (or a much faster way to test the null hypothesis). If someone truly "wins" the race in Bitcoin and finds an algorithmic shortcut to speed things up they've broken a major global security tool and possibly "won" internet security in general (by breaking it).