NiceHash is an open marketplace that connects sellers or miners of hashing power with buyers of hashing power. Buyers select the crypto-currency that they want to mine, a pool on which they want to mine, set the price that they are willing to pay for it, and place the order. NiceHash QuickMiner — is a new generation miner developed by NiceHash. It is currently in experimental phase! NiceHash QuickMiner only uses Excavator for GPU mining and is digitally signed. Excavator is a proprietary miner, and the code that runs like NiceHash QuickMiner is either developed by NiceHash or used from public repositories, which means it’s.
Mining cryptocurrencies can be an intimidating undertaking, even for someone with a background in computers or technology. There is the hardware setup, creating a wallet, downloading and configuring mining software, joining a pool, and choosing what to mine. While it’s certainly not impossible, it can be a fair amount of work. NiceHash is a tool that does a good job of eliminating some of this hard work for those who want to start mining.
What is NiceHash?
NiceHash touts itself as the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining marketplace. This means that they take miners with computers that have hashing power and connect them with people who want to purchase hashing power to mine. For miners, it’s an easy way to get a return in cryptocurrency for your hashing power without going through a lot of the steps of manually setting up a miner and joining a pool. We’ll cover both of sides of NiceHash’s business starting with buying mining power.
Mine crypto without a mining rig
If you’re interested in mining cryptocurrencies you may be surprised to find out that you can mine without a mining rig of your own. Purchasing hashing power might be of interest to not only the hardware-less, but also those looking to boost their mining activity.
Buying hashing power on NiceHash
With the recent, dramatic rise in cryptocurrency value and the bright, projected future of coin prices, it’s no wonder that many of us want to have some of our assets in Bitcoin, Ethereum or other Altcoins. As we start to dip our toes into the waters of crypto investing, many of us try to find a better way to get our hands on these currencies without having to pay the market price. This naturally leads us to mining, but with the required investment of hundreds or thousands of dollars to build a mining rig, options can be limited. NiceHash gives you an option to start mining without having to put up the time or expense of building a computer or buying an ASIC miner.
How does NiceHash work?
NiceHash is a very easy-to-use marketplace that allows you to deposit Bitcoin and purchase the hashing power (processing power used for mining cryptocurrency) from other people’s computers or mining rigs around the world. The way it works is that you purchase a specific amount of hashing power (minimum of .005 Bitcoin) and choose what algorithm you want it to mine. NiceHash then finds computers that are capable of supplying that hashing power and you essentially lease those computers for the amount of time that you paid for. Simple enough.
What cryptocurrencies can you mine?
NiceHash allows you to purchase processing power for over 30 different algorithms. These include SHA-256 (Bitcoin and others), Equihash (Ethereum), Scrypt (Litecoin) and many more. Nearly any cryptocurrency you can think of can be mined through NiceHash.
How you are paid
When you make a purchase through NiceHash, you choose your algorithm and currency that you want to mine, then enter your pool and wallet details. This is exactly the same as if you were mining with your own computer. You will then select how much hashing power you want to buy and it will give you a projected amount of hashing power and length of time that it will take to deliver that power. Once you place your order, it will start mining.
As it mines, you will start to see the currency show up in your pool account and wallet (once you hit your specified payout through the pool). Once NiceHash has delivered the amount of hashing power that you purchased, your order will be fulfilled and the transaction will be done.
Advantages of purchasing hashing power through NiceHash
There are many advantages of purchasing hashing power on this platform, especially if you want to start mining, but aren’t ready to build a rig. These advantages include:
- No expensive upfront investment in equipment
- You are not paying for your own electricity while mine
- You can mine any algorithm and coin that you’d like
- Your currency is deposited directly to you, through a pool, just as if you were mining with your own rig
- You won’t ever go over your allotted mining investment as it’s a fixed amount of power that you are buying
- Unlike some hashing power marketplaces, you are not committed to long contracts that can sometimes require months or years of commitment.
- You can see in real-time how much of your purchased hashing power has been delivered.
- Ordering is very straightforward, in a self-service model.
Disadvantages of purchasing hashing power
While there are a lot of benefits to purchasing through NiceHash, there are also a few drawbacks to be aware of:
- It’s a marketplace based on supply and demand, so it ends up being fairly efficient in terms of getting out a similar value to what you paid. There are profits to be had, but at a small scale, they can be slim. Don’t expect a 2-3x return on your investment.
- You still have to have an account with a pool and your own wallet address to mine to.
- NiceHash tends to email you a lot when your order is nearing completion. This is a small inconvenience, but can get a little bit annoying as it is A LOT of email.
The best way to buy hashing power through NiceHash
Since the margins can be fairly slim, you will want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your hashing power purchase.
One way to do this is to make sure that you are mining a coin that is profitable at the time you are purchasing your hashing power. We like using whattomine.com to gauge what makes sense to mine at any given time. You can plug in the hashing power that you will be purchasing and see what your return will be. There is also a bit of a speculation game here, since hashing power can be delivered over a period of days. If you purchase processing power to mine a coin that goes up in value over the time that you are mining it, your return will likely be higher than what you paid for the power.
Nicehash Miner Download
Another tactic that I have seen a lot of is finding smaller pools to join, then waiting until they are ripe for finding blocks. If you can see that a pool has not been rewarded a block of coins lately for a certain cryptocurrency, you can point a large purchase of hashing power at that coin in that pool and see a return that is greater than what it normally would be with regular mining. This takes a little bit of research and patience, but can pay off in a big way if you time it right.
Get competitive when you place your order. Since you are able to set and adjust the price that you pay for hashing power, you don’t have to just take what the market gives you. You can think of it like placing a limit order in the stock market. If you place your order at slightly below market value, that order can be filled and you can earn some extra profit in the margins.
Nicehash Miner V1.7.5.13
Start mining without a mining rig with NiceHash
- Go to NiceHash and click on the “register now” link in the buy section.
- Follow the prompts and setup your NiceHash account.
- Deposit Bitcoin into the wallet address supplied by NiceHash.
- Once your funds clear, go to the marketplace.
- Select the algorithm for the cryptocurrency you wish to mine.
- Enter your wallet and pool details
- Place your hashing power order
- Your hashing power delivery will start almost immediately – you’re now mining.
You can monitor the status of your hashing power purchase on NiceHash and of course should monitor your mining progress at the pool you’re mining with.
That’s how NiceHash works for those who are interested in mining but who aren’t interested in building or buying a mining rig of their own. Now we’ll move on to the opposite side of the business, selling hashing power via NiceHash. Ready to give it a go? Visit NiceHash and start mining!
Selling mining power on NiceHash
As a seller, you can lease out your hashing power (your computer’s ability to mine) to buyers around the world that want to mine, but don’t have a mining rig. Whether you have a simple CPU, a gaming computer, a mining rig or an ASIC miner, you can hook it up to mine for NiceHash and they will pay you in Bitcoin for the power that you provide.
The NiceHash mining interface is incredibly straightforward.
Without NiceHash, you have to find a miner and a pool, then mine one cryptocurrency (or two if you are dual mining). With NiceHash, you simply download the desktop app, use the wallet address that they create for you, then start mining. NiceHash will automatically switch the algorithm that your rig mines based on what is most profitable at that moment. Over the course of the day, you could be mining 10 different currencies with 5 different algorithms, but you will still be paid in Bitcoin for the power that you lease out.
Benefits of NiceHash mining
There are a number of benefits to using NiceHash instead of individually mining different coins.
- The greatest benefit of selling hashing power on NiceHash is the ease of use. You simply download their application to your desktop, let it run it’s benchmark tests, click start and you are mining.
- NiceHash optimizes cryptocurrency mining activity and automatically switches between them.
- With NiceHash, you only need one miner, no pool and one Bitcoin wallet.
- You are paid in Bitcoin, which is no longer profitable to mine for someone with a CPU/GPU rig (as opposed to an ASIC miner).
- NiceHash has a great dashboard view that shows you earnings in real-time as well as your projected payout and next payout date.
Disadvantages of NiceHash mining
Nicehash Miner Vs Quickminer
In addition to the pros of mining with NiceHash, there are also some cons.
Nicehash Miner Os
- As a miner, you don’t have the ability to choose what you mine.
- You can only get paid out in Bitcoin (BTC), so if you prefer alt coins, you will have to purchase them later.
- There are times when mining with NiceHash is less profitable than if you were to manually select which currency to mine on your own, though there are other times when mining with NiceHash is more efficient than any of the other mining options.
- Like any miner and pool, NiceHash takes certain fees for mining and withdrawals. To us, these seem pretty fair and in line with other mining options, but make sure you understand the fees before you get started.
- If you are attempting to overclock your cards (which you should be), you may not be able to push your GPUs as hard as you can if you were mining currencies of a shared algorithm. Since NiceHash automatically switches algorithms, it may switch to mine a coin that is not optimal for your overclocking settings. We suggest starting out with minimal overclocking, then slowly stepping it up over time to test.
How to start mining with NiceHash
Getting started mining with NiceHash is a simple process that only takes about 15 minutes. By following the steps below, you can have your rig up and running right away.
- Download NiceHash miner
- Choose the type of rig that you’ll be mining with. For most of us, this will be a CPU/GPU miner, unless you have purchased an ASIC miner or own a mining farm.
- Depending on your setup select between AMD and Nvidia cards for your graphics processing units (GPUs). If you are unsure of which one yours are, you can go to the settings on your computer to see what graphics card you have, or if you built the computer yourself, you can Google the model name/number of your GPUs to see if it is AMD or Nvidia.
- Download the miner for your GPUs
- Unzip and install the software. This is just like installing any other software application and the wizard will guide you through the process.
- Open the mining program.
- Enter your NiceHash wallet address in the mining software. You can find this by creating a login on NiceHash.com or using the address that they give you.
- Benchmark your miner’s video cards. The miner will have to go through this process to understand the capabilities of your mining rig. This process typically takes about 5-15 minutes.
- Start mining! Once the benchmarking process is complete, simply click the “Start Mining” button to begin mining cryptocurrency. The program will automatically switch hashing algorithms to mine different coins, but will pay you a roughly equivalent amount for your hashing power in Bitcoin directly to your account.
There you have it! With those simple steps, you are up and running with your mining rig.
Nicehash Miner Calculator
We hope this gave you some insight into buying and selling hashing power through NiceHash. If you have any questions, check out the extensive help section on the NiceHash website.