Two people got very large payouts, a significant percentage of what was owed to them.
I think you meant to say something like "a portion of the past-due payouts". These contracts are still owed 4+ years more of pay-outs to come.
What's owed to someone in a ponzi is a contentious topic, especially when a decent number of the people here likely knew it was a ponzi and were hoping to reach breakeven before it collapsed.
Well. I´m still sticking to my early theory that he was reselling hash from CEX. Their payouts evaporated after the big diff. increase in early Nov. and his payouts soon started gradually decreasing until the operation then folded.
Huh? In Oct 2nd 1GH/s on CEX.io was selling for
BTC0.00268. At the same time, PBMining was selling for
BTC0.0021. If they were reselling CEX.io, there were taking a big loss on every contract sold, and then continuing to take a loss each week from the CEX.io maintenance fees.
That theory makes no sense.
You assume that he bought the hash on their market. Neither you (presumably) nor I have any idea about how CEX handled their bulk sales.