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From the Epic Scale website (http://www.epicscale.com/):

How is money earned?

Solving math problems for weather prediction, physics simulations, cryptography (including cryptocurrency mining) and more has real world value. We solve these problems on behalf of our trusted partners, and donate proceeds to your favorite charities.

The key words there being including cryptocurrency mining.

It probably mines altoins and then trades them for bitcoin. With a decent GPU you can break even.

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Even if we assume half load and 12 hours a day, it still adds up to real money if you multiply it by enough users.

Perhaps it could mine whatever someone wants to have calculated, instead of garbage, in exchange for that amount of money :)

They have few hundreds millions users.