I personally do not believe it was intended to test the overall strength of the blockchain or bitcoin encryption. There are scientists who use very powerful hardware in very advanced laboratories who have been testing encryption challenges for years. And they do not usually visit forums in order to share their findings, primarily due to security concerns.
I'd throw in "Quantum computers" into the discussion but considering that commercial versions are 20+ years away from reality, it's more likely that people will be alerted by some Google Project Zero researcher who finds and discloses a flaw in ECDSA, than by any brute forcing a bunch of crackers are doing
However, we'd make a good benchmark on how practical the exploits are for random people to pull off.