The reason any coin has value is because people believe it does. At least with this coin we can definitively say real valuable work was done in order to earn a coin and that work will in fact have a value when looked at from a macro point-of-view.
A big factor would also be for investing as a donation. Each curecoin represents a certain amount of research done which at this point 1 curecoin represents 30,000 folding @ home points. Therefore, if you want to help cure cancer but don't want to have a rig by buying say 3000 curecoin you are funding 100 million F@H points which means you are funding that much research being done. This was another angle I was thinking of it being marketed as.
I like the idea.