NiceHash mining review 2026: fees, RTPPS payouts, withdrawals, 2017 hack, who it fits

Is NiceHash worth it for a Bitcoin ASIC? It can be, if you want small, frequent payouts and are fine keeping earnings in a custodial wallet for a while. The miner fee is 2% and payouts start from 1,000 sats. Large farms that want a steady rate per TH and no exchange counterparty may prefer a direct FPPS pool.

POOL BTC is an independent comparison site. We are not NiceHash, we do not run a pool or a marketplace, and nothing here is investment advice. The figures below come from NiceHash's own pages, the official pages of the pools we compare it with, mempool.space and press coverage, all checked on 2026-10-13. When a number comes from a single third party, we flag it.

What is NiceHash, and how is it different from a mining pool?

NiceHash is a hashrate marketplace. Miners sell hashrate and buyers pay for it: a buyer places an order with an algorithm, a target pool and a maximum price, and NiceHash routes connected machines to active orders. Your ASIC does not mine blocks for NiceHash itself. It mines for whoever is buying at that moment.

That changes a few things compared with pointing a miner at a regular pool:

• The order book refreshes every 10 seconds, so the price for your hashrate moves all day.
• Buyers choose between two order types. Standard orders are cheaper but can be outbid. Fixed orders lock the price for up to 24 hours and are limited to 50% of available hashrate.
• Bitcoin ASICs connect under the algorithm label SHA256AsicBoost, which means overt AsicBoost. There is a separate SHA256AsicBoost_USDT variant if you want to be paid in USDT.

The marketplace is large. On 2026-10-13 the NiceHash mining page showed about 27.19 EH/s on SHA256AsicBoost from 560,703 miners. mempool.space put the 7-day network average at about 1.01 ZH/s, roughly 1,010 EH/s. That works out to about 2.7% of the network. NiceHash does not publish that share; it is our own arithmetic, and both inputs change by the hour.

We covered the basic trade-off in an earlier piece, NiceHash or a regular pool: when selling hashrate pays more. This review goes into the numbers.

What fees does NiceHash charge miners?

Sellers pay 2% on payouts to NiceWallet, per the official service fees page for miners. That page does not state a fee for payouts sent directly to an external BTC wallet. NiceHash's own ASIC firmware has a separate fee of 2%, which drops to 1.4% when the machine mines on NiceHash.

The firmware is described as powered by MARA. The official list covers Antminer S19, S19 Pro, S19j Pro, S19j Pro+, S19 XP, S21 Pro, T21, S21 XP, L7 and L9, and NiceHash says the list is expanding. It also claims up to a 20% performance boost. That is the vendor's figure; we have not seen an independent test of it.

The buyer fee matters to miners only indirectly, since buyers price it into their bids. We list it because it comes up in comparisons, but the official buyer fee page returned a 404 when we checked, so the 3% figure rests on one third-party review.

How do RTPPS payouts work, and how much do earnings vary?

RTPPS pays for every valid share in real time. You carry no block luck, because NiceHash pays you whether or not the buyer's pool finds a block. What you do carry is price risk: the rate per share follows buyer demand on the marketplace, so the same machine can earn different amounts on different days.

On 2026-10-13 the mining page showed a paying rate of 0.4758 BTC per EH per day for SHA256AsicBoost. Treat that as a snapshot. It moves with the order book.

How does that compare with FPPS? Marko Tarman, lead mining manager at NiceHash, told DL News that RTPPS paid about 0.55% above FPPS averaged over one 30-day window. It is a company figure for a single window, not an independent measurement, so it says little about any other month. We also could not confirm on an official page the claim that NiceHash uses an FPPS index as a price floor, so we treat that as unconfirmed.

A direct FPPS pool gives a steadier rate per TH, set by the pool's own formula. NiceHash swaps that for a market price. Which one suits you comes down to whether you would rather have predictable income or exposure to swings in demand, up and down.

One correction while we are here: at least one aggregator labels NiceHash as PPLNS or FPPS. That is likely inaccurate. NiceHash calls its scheme RTPPS.

How often does NiceHash pay out, and what are the withdrawal minimums?

By default NiceHash pays every 4 hours, up to six times a day, into NiceWallet. You can switch to one daily payout at about 00:00 UTC. The minimum balance for a payout is 0.00001 BTC, or 1,000 sats. Moving coins out of NiceWallet is a separate step with its own minimums and fees.

Withdrawal terms from the official withdrawal fees page:

So the 1,000-sat payout minimum and the 0.0005 BTC on-chain withdrawal minimum are two different numbers. A small miner gets paid often, but has to build up a balance before sending it on-chain to a cold wallet. Lightning lowers that bar to 200 sats.

What about mining payouts straight to an external wallet, skipping NiceWallet? CoinBureau wrote in December 2024 that this needs a balance above 0.1 BTC for daily payouts or above 0.001 BTC for weekly ones. We did not find this on an official page, and the fee for that route is not stated either.

Who is NiceHash a good fit for, and who should look elsewhere?

NiceHash fits small and mid-size miners who want frequent payouts from a low threshold, no block luck, and the option of USDT. It fits less well for farms that want a predictable rate per TH, payouts that never touch a custodial wallet, or a published policy on countries and KYC.

It may suit you if you:

• run a few machines and want earnings to start flowing from 1,000 sats;
• prefer Lightning withdrawals with a low minimum;
• want to split hashrate between BTC and USDT payouts;
• already run NiceHash firmware on a supported Antminer and want the 1.4% rate.

You may be better off elsewhere if you:

• budget on a steady rate per TH and do not want marketplace swings;
• do not want earnings held by a third party between payouts;
• mine from a country where you cannot confirm access, given that NiceHash publishes no country list we could find.

Which countries can use NiceHash, and is KYC required?

The official site does not answer either question clearly. When we checked on 2026-10-13, the KYC and restricted countries pages returned 404. The company is registered in Slovenia, in the EU. Nothing official covers Russia, the CIS, Latin America or Argentina, and we found no confirmed ban specific to Russian users.

There is one claim worth knowing about. Kryptex, which runs a competing pool, says NiceHash made KYC mandatory for all users from 2024-11-04 and blocked mining for unverified accounts from 2024-11-12. Kryptex has a commercial interest here, and we could not confirm either date from a NiceHash source. Treat it as unconfirmed, and check your account's verification status before you point machines at NiceHash.

How safe is NiceHash, and what happened in the 2017 hack?

NiceWallet is custodial: NiceHash holds your coins until you withdraw. The security page lists 2FA, email confirmation for withdrawals, 24/7 monitoring, AES-256 encryption and funds backed by reserves. In December 2017 the company lost 4,640 BTC in a hack, and it later repaid that amount in full.

What happened, in order:

1. 6-7 December 2017. Attackers stole 4,640 BTC through a compromised employee computer. Reports at the time valued it at about $63-70 million. NiceHash's security page attributes the attack to the Lazarus Group.
2. February 2018. A repayment program started. Finance Magnates reported that 60% had been returned by August 2018.
3. December 2020. CEO Martin Skorjanc confirmed that all 4,640 BTC had been repaid.

The repayment counts for something. The underlying risk is still there, though: any balance sitting in NiceWallet depends on how well the company secures it. The reserve backing is NiceHash's own statement, and we found no independent attestation of it on the official site. The practical fix is simple. Turn on 2FA, withdraw regularly, and do not let a large balance build up.

How do you connect an ASIC to NiceHash?

You point the miner at a NiceHash stratum address and enter your NiceHash credentials as the worker. The official mining page lists the endpoints below. The ".auto." part picks a region for you. The official region pages returned 404, and one third-party source mentions EU and US marketplaces.

1. Create a NiceHash account and turn on 2FA before anything else.
2. Open the miner's web interface and go to the pool settings.
3. For BTC payouts over TCP, enter `stratum+tcp://sha256asicboost.auto.nicehash.com:9200`.
4. For an encrypted connection, use `stratum+ssl://sha256asicboost.auto.nicehash.com:443` if your firmware supports SSL stratum.
5. For USDT payouts, use `stratum+tcp://sha256asicboost-usdt.auto.nicehash.com:9200`.
6. Enter the worker name in the format your NiceHash account shows, save, and wait for the machine to appear in the dashboard.
7. Leave it running for a day and compare what it earned with your expected figure in the mining calculator.

You can run BTC and USDT side by side by sending part of your fleet to each endpoint.

What are the risks of mining on NiceHash?

• Price risk. RTPPS removes block luck, but the rate follows buyer demand and can drop.
• Custody. Earnings sit in NiceWallet until you withdraw. NiceHash lost 4,640 BTC in 2017, though it repaid everything by 2020.
• Unpublished rules. KYC, country restrictions, the external-wallet payout fee and the region list are not stated on the official site.
• Unconfirmed claims. The buyer fee, the KYC dates and the FPPS floor each rest on third-party or company-only sources.
• Firmware claims. The up to 20% boost is the vendor's own figure.

How does NiceHash compare with Braiins Pool, Kryptex Pool and Luxor?

The main difference is the model. NiceHash sells your hashrate on a market and pays RTPPS, while Braiins Pool and Luxor pay FPPS and Kryptex Pool pays PPS+. NiceHash and Braiins Pool via Lightning have the lowest payout thresholds of the four. Kryptex Pool is the only one of the three pools that states no KYC on its own pages.

A few details that do not fit the table. Braiins Pool pays daily at 09:00 UTC, waives the on-chain fee for payouts of 0.005 BTC or more and charges 0.0001 BTC below that. Kryptex Pool runs from a data center in Europe. Luxor is US-based and says it has miners in 113 countries.

For more detail, see our Kryptex Pool review and Luxor vs Braiins Pool. To see what a 2%, 2.5% or 3% fee means for your own machines, change the pool fee field in the mining calculator.

FAQ

Is NiceHash a mining pool?

No. NiceHash is a hashrate marketplace. Buyers place orders that name a target pool and a maximum price, and NiceHash routes miners' hashrate to those orders. Miners are paid on RTPPS for every valid share, at a rate set by buyer demand.

What is the NiceHash fee for Bitcoin miners?

The official fee page gives 2% on payouts to NiceWallet. The fee for direct payouts to an external wallet is not stated. If you run NiceHash ASIC firmware, it has its own fee of 2%, or 1.4% when the machine mines on NiceHash.

What is the minimum payout on NiceHash?

The minimum balance for a mining payout is 0.00001 BTC, or 1,000 sats, paid every 4 hours by default. Withdrawing from NiceWallet has separate minimums: 0.0005 BTC on-chain, 200 sats via Lightning and 10 USDT for USDT.

Was NiceHash hacked, and did users get their bitcoin back?

Yes on both counts. In December 2017 attackers stole 4,640 BTC through a compromised employee computer. Repayments began in February 2018, and in December 2020 CEO Martin Skorjanc confirmed the full 4,640 BTC had been returned.

Does NiceHash require KYC?

The official KYC page returned 404 when we checked on 2026-10-13. Kryptex, a competitor, says KYC became mandatory for all NiceHash users in November 2024 and that unverified accounts were blocked from mining. We could not confirm this from NiceHash, so check your own account status.

Does NiceHash earn more than an FPPS pool?

It depends on the month. A NiceHash manager told DL News that RTPPS paid about 0.55% above FPPS over one 30-day window, but that is a single company-reported period. Because the rate follows buyer demand, it can come in above or below a fixed FPPS rate.

This article contains referral links to mining pools (marked as sponsored). We may receive a reward if you register through them. This does not change the figures or the order of rows in the tables: the terms are taken from the pools' official pages.