But what is the significance of the term "seats"?
Keeping it simple… There are 30,000 seats. So let’s say NastyMining mines a block tomorrow. The 3.125 BTC would get split up and paid out to the seats (with 25% going to NastyMining) so each seat would receive approximately 0.00007812 BTC. Using similar logic, NastyMining is currently sitting on more than 16 BTC that is essentially owned by the seats.
So you could redeem your seat for BTC? Or whomever owns the seat at the time (if a block were to be mined), then they would get paid out immediately with whatever address they submitted?
The seats on the coins are not currently redeemable. This is something I would like to see in the future as I think it would further unlock value for the coins and allow the pending BTC to be claimed. I urge people to support my call for NastyFans to integrate this into the platform.
While NastyMining is solo mining currently (I have been mining since June of 2011), if we were to hit a block it would get paid out to the owner of the seats (NastyFans.org for more info). There is a threshold that exists to keep the seats from building up dust that costs more to spend than they are worth (digital seats not attached to coins can adjust the threshold on the website), but I would like to see this amount be claimable by redeeming seats as mentioned above.