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It has immense significance in terms of digital security, which relies on prime factorisation. The Collatz Conjecture effectively explores in what ways the prime factorization of a affects the prime factorization of (a+1).

Well. I fail to see the merit of almost anything comparable to that. Maybe that's the point: I am not a mathematician -let alone a theoretical mathematician at that.

As far as I am concerned: this is an unsolved problem of the field of mathematics. Maybe it's the completionist in me, but I would like to solve it based just on that. :D