> Is there a way to manipulate or influence which miners get with transactions? Some cryptocurrency nerds can correct me if I wrong, but AFAIK yeah. If miner i

> Is there a way to manipulate or influence which miners get with transactions? Some cryptocurrency nerds can correct me if I wrong, but AFAIK yeah. If miner is your friend you can sent privately to him in advance signed transaction that need to be secretely included in a block. Then you can only distribute the transaction itself over network after that miner already started to mine block with said transaction. TBH I have no idea if it's possible to get block included on chain if it's had "secret" transactions in it, but for certain it's possible for one miner to start work on block with said transaction few seconds earlier than others. There is still risk that someone else will mine it though.