Topic: ==== Eligius, please pay my 200+ BTC ==== - page 5. (Read 12592 times)

I think there are two issues with this:

1 - Per the top contributors page on the eligius website, the address with the most hashpower only contributes ~6.5% (6.4736%) of the hashpower of the pool over the last three hours. CPPSRB is really not something that people would generally leave and/or start mining with over the short term. Other major pool operators use PPLnS (discus fish uses PPS) and they are the same way. This isn't a discussion about what method is best, I am trying to say that miners have no real reason to go from pool to pool based on payment method (at least among the major pools). Therefore it would be fair to say that the 3 hour average would be roughly the same as a 1 week average or the average when the selfish miner was on eligius.

You previously said that eligius lost ~400 BTC, based on $571 for 1 BTC that comes out to ~$228,400 that was stolen. Your largest mining address lost ~$14,850 from the selfish miner. If you look at your number 5 mining address they only lost ~$3,300 from the selfish miner. The point is that the amounts of individual miners are relatively small and probably would not be worth hiring an attorney over, also attorneys would probably want to be paid by the hour for a case with that much is dispute. If you were to hire an attorney to bring a case trying to recover the entire $228,400 (400 BTC) then there would be a better chance that an attorney would work on a contingent basis (agree to only get paid if they win and the payment would be taken out of the settlement/judgment).

2 - Individual miners may not have standing to sue the selfish miner. In a civil case (involving money/damages) you must prove that damages be caused, but also that he damages were against you. There is clearly a relationship between the miners and the pool (the miners provide work for the pool and in exchange for each unit of work the pool provides a maximum amount of payment, if payment is less then the maximum then when the pool can afford to pay more then the maximum the units that got paid less get paid more). The relationship between miners at the pool are not as clear. I am not an attorney, but I think a likely ruling would be if a miner tried to sue another miner at the same pool, the judge would say that their "beef" is with the pool operator, not the selfish miner. On the other hand if the pool operator were to sue a miner the damages are more clear, as the miner did not provide the work, the miner said they provided the work, and the pool operator paid for the work that was not done. There is clearly a fraud here.

My analysis may or may not be correct. I do think that a pool operator sueing a scammer miner would send a strong message to scammers in the Bitcoin world. That they can no longer scam/steal and get away with it. To my knowledge none of the thefts/scams that have taken place that have been bitcoin related have been prosecuted (I think a few people have been doxed, but no prosecutions to my knowledge).

Just my two cents......