Mathematicians make major discovery about prime numbers

earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8782890

Speaking of large gaps between primes - There is a Bitcoin clone recently released called "Gapcoin" which replaces the SHA256 hash-breaking with finding large prime gaps. It seems completely unknown and has very few people mining it, yet it already broke a few hundred records, and is one spot away from breaking Donald Knuth's record in the "top 20 highest merit gaps"

http://primerecords.dk/primegaps/gaps20.htm

http://gapcoin.org/primegaps.php

I am curious if there is any scientific use for finding these high-merit gaps? Or is it the same usefulness as finding a slightly longer expansion of PI?