Powering billions of dollars worth of bitcoin not worthy enough?

I get the feeling if money was not involved it may qualify as a worthy research project.

It's not the money. Dedicate the computational power to @Folding and it would be worthwhile even if they also paid people. Personally if I had to choose between generating data for medical research or hash functions for proof of work, I'd go for the medical research. Though I'm not sure we really have to choose-- aren't there coins in the works that are trying to address the massive power consumption issue?

exactly what would be its value outside of the monetary one for you ?