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Micropayment systems, things like hashcash, and some anti-spam proposals, always depended on these kinds of computations being done. They weren't new 20+ years ago when I first heard of them, so they definitely aren't new now.

And the concept of subversively getting large numbers of unknowing volunteers to contribute to the efforts is even older - it was originally called the "chinese television" (the idea being that there are hundreds of millions of them, so great for embarassingly parallel tasks).

So git orf moi larn!