NiceHash Review: Introduction to the Cloud Mining Platform

What is NiceHash?

NiceHash is an online marketplace for buying and selling your computer’s hashing power, as well as a mining pool.

NiceHash has been operating as a mining service provider since April 2014. According to its stats, it has over 99,000 daily active miners, more than 4,311,000 orders served, and over 197,000 BTC paid out.

NiceHash has servers located in Amsterdam, Chennai, Hong Kong, San Jose, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and other locations across Europe and the US. The platform uses CloudFlare to ensure the protection of their site and Bit Go bitcoin wallet to ensure and secure BTC deposits.

How NiceHash Works

NiceHash enables owners of computing power to either sell it or buy it for mining purposes. Buyers can place an order for hash power right after they registered for an account, and sellers have the option of remaining anonymous by not registering at all.

NiceHash Mining Algorithms

The platform supports a list of 34 different algorithms, including SHA-256, Blake, Equihash, Scrypt, X11, X13, X15, and many others. You are able to mine the algorithm is most profitable at the time and all payouts are made in Bitcoin. In order to find out which coin brings more profit, try using Whattomine.com.

Mining pools

You are able to join a mining pool to mine a certain coin. To get started, you will have to deposit BTC (minimum 0.01 BTC) and then head on to the NiceHash marketplace and place your order. Regardless of the cryptocurrency you choose, all the prices are shown in Bitcoin.

Selling Hash Power

With NiceHash, you can sell computing power regardless of the rig you own. Computing power can be sold from a GPU/CPU, and ASIC rig or an entire rig farm. You are also able to select the algorithm and the location of the servers for your mining operations.

It is recommended to use the servers closest to you for increased performance.

NiceHash Profit Calculator

The platform features a Mining Profitability Calculator estimates what profit you can make with your type of hardware, your electricity cost, and other conditions for a set period of time.

NiceHash Plans & Pricing

No fixed plans are available at NiceHash. Here you can choose to set a contract with the hash power either based on GH/s or the price in BTC. The cloud hashing contract’s price is calculated depending on the hashrate bought.

The prices vary depending on coin market prices and the total hashing power used at a certain algorithm. The price list refreshes every 10 seconds by using information aggregated from exchanges or other websites.

Buyers can purchase hash rates in two ways: Standard bidding and Fixed.

Cloud mining at NiceHash has the following prices:

• fixed priced contract: 0.0305 BTC per GH/s per day
• standard bidding contract: from 0.0264 BTC per GH/s per day

All NiceHash payments have to be made in Bitcoins.

NiceHash Fees and Pricing

Buying Hashing Power

• Non-Refundable New Order Fee: 0.0001 BTC
• Orders for Buying Hashing Power: 3% (unspent amount on cancelled orders has no fee applied)

Selling Hashing Power

• Payouts for Balances to external wallet < 0.1: 5%
• Payouts for Balances to external wallet ≥ 0.1 BTC: 3%
• Payouts for Balances to NiceHash wallet ≥ 0.001 BTC: 2%

Withdrawals and Deposits

Withdrawing to any external BTC wallet amounts of 0.002 to 0.05 BTC incurs a fee of 0.0001 BTC. Withdrawals that are over 0.05 BTC have applied a fee of 0.2%. Withdrawals over 0.001 BTC to Coinbase wallets are free of charge.

Depositing BTC amounts over 0.01 to a NiceHash Wallet incur no fees.

The full NiceHash fee model is available on their page.

NiceHash Payouts   

NiceHash employs a Pay Per Share (PPS) payout model to reward sellers, meaning that payouts are made automatically on a daily basis as long as the following minimums are met:

• Daily payouts for unpaid balances in NiceHash wallets: 0.001 BTC minimum
• Daily payouts for unpaid balances in external wallets: 0.1 BTC minimum
• Weekly payouts for unpaid balances in external wallets: 0.001 BTC minimum

 Summary

NiceHash is one of the biggest mining marketplaces for cryptos on the market. Users can easily set up their software and start mining within 15 minutes. NiceHash is a good option for those looking to either sell or buy higher hash rates to get more profitable mining results. Be sure to use the profitability calculator to estimate if you will be making a profit with your specifications.