NiceHash is/was one of the most popular mining services available, thanks to its technology that automatically switches to mine the most profitable cryptocurrency. After a quick client install and dropping in your Bitcoin address, you’re away and mining, trading PC cycles (and power) for alt coin mining returns, paid out in Bitcoin. Sounds great right?
Well the system was going well until it was hacked on December 6th. Thousands of miners lost money stored in their NiceHash wallets. By the time the 22nd of December arrived, the service was back and NiceHash issued a big please come back message to the community. Many did. The change this time is that they mined to an external wallet (like Coinbase) often still believing NiceHash’s core technology was solid, but had completely lost faith in their security.
The problem arose when NiceHash changed the fees and payout amounts, active immediately. This made mining to an external address basically unviable for small scale users (the majority of NiceHash users). The new requirement of hitting 0.01 BTC balance before receiving a payout meant many could mine for the best part of a year before seeing a payout, again opening a massive risk to storing balances with NiceHash.
As expected, the reddit community /r/nicehash made it clear they weren’t happy. As a piece offering Nicehash allowed users to withdraw to a Coinbase account without fees and instantly (minimum balances remain). That was a positive step forward, but if you’d actually been mining to an external wallet, including Coinbase, this option wasn’t available to you, this fee-free transfer option was only for users that mined to a NiceHash wallet address.
Imagine if you’d written off your losses, made piece with it and decided to leave your balance behind yet again and do as they ask, start mining to a NiceHash wallet, with the plan to transfer to Coinbase once you’d reached the NiceHash wallet minimum 0.05 balance. For some, this would be days, if not a week of mining, maybe you got close, but then today happens.
In the latest news post from NiceHash the company again screwed over users, with another change sighting ‘high Bitcoin transaction fees’ NiceHash will now move to the following conditions:
- If deposited amount is less than 0.05 BTC (previously 0.01 BTC), the fee is 0.001 BTC.
- If deposited amount is more than or equal to 0.05 BTC, we charge no deposit fee (0 BTC).
There is also a slight change in the withdrawal fee when withdrawing to any Bitcoin wallet from NiceHash wallet. If you are withdrawing between 0.0105 BTC (min withdraw amount) and 0.2 BTC, you are subjected to 0.001 BTC fee (previously 0.0005 BTC). The only saving grace is that withdrawing funds from NiceHash wallet to Coinbase account remains fee-free.
These changes come into effect January 5, 2018, at 12:00 CET.
With Bitcoin volatility in both transaction cues and fees means NiceHash are doing a lot of talking about using alternate cryptocurrencies to deposit, but still we wait.
Update
To add salt to the wound, NiceHash have now tweeted a warning to users that they are going offline, randomly and often.
Dear NiceHash users! Please expect multiple maintenance periods in the next 24 hours. During this time some of the parts of our service might not work.
Thank you for your understanding.
— NiceHash (@NiceHashMining) January 5, 2018
I agree. It’s already bad enough to see a huge difference between directly mining the most profitable coin at any given time compared to doing it via NiceHash let alone having such disadvantages using an external wallet. They discourage the use of an external wallet because just like banks, they utilize the market volatility to invest your balance elsewhere (so they get more). They fall in the same category as those devs that put a built in fee on their mining software. I rather pay for something like that with a 1 time fee rather than getting the dev to take a share of the so-called 2% (which is actually 6-15% – cough cough Claymore.. EWBF you effing liars cough cough). So greedy.