Without question, NiceHash is the best interface of all the Mining sites I've seen. it offers the most intuitive experience for anyone new trying to break into mining. They do absolutely everything for you, all you have to do is set your RIG to mine. Just to be clear, NiceHash uses your computational power to mine for altcoin and then pays you in bitcoin (thx to John Files for pointing that out).
You can quickly register and start mining in seconds, and earn some serious money if you use the right GPU for their algorithms. The interface even shows you how many machines you have mining for altcoins and there's the option to view profits in bitcoin and how that transfers to actual currency. For a beginner, it gives you all the statistics you could need, including a free built-in wallet to hold your newly mined BTC currency. But, and there's always a but!
NiceHash, unfortunately, was hacked in December, losing over sixty million, this forced NH to go offline for about two weeks. As you can imagine, anyone who was heavily mining with NH would have seriously been distraught and upset with the loss of this connection and lack of communication. However (don't quote me on this) Nicehash were soon back in business and promised to reimburse pool members in full by the end of January 31, 2018.
How did they get hacked?
Nearly $64m in bitcoin was stolen by hackers who broke into Slovenian-based bitcoin mining marketplace NiceHash. The marketplace suspended operations while it investigated the breach, saying it was working with law enforcement as “a matter of urgency” while urging users to change their passwords.
What security measures have been put in place?
Unfortunately I've not been able to find out any new information on this, but as mentioned above, NiceHash have urged miners to change their passwords to something more secure, for instance, the more characters you have in the password, the more difficult it is for you and hackers to get into, anything above 16 characters would be next to impossible decrypt, but for the average joe, impossible to remember. Make sure your bitcoin is stored in a wallet, tell no one about the private key, your coins should then be safe from all online attack vectors. Where all this falls over is with the physical world, losing your laptop, leaving your phone on a train, house burglary, fire damage, and the biggest threat of all, yourself.
Unfortunately I've not been able to find out any new information on this, but as mentioned above, NiceHash have urged miners to change their passwords to something more secure, for instance, the more characters you have in the password, the more difficult it is for you and hackers to get into, anything above 16 characters would be next to impossible decrypt, but for the average joe, impossible to remember. Make sure your bitcoin is stored in a wallet, tell no one about the private key, your coins should then be safe from all online attack vectors. Where all this falls over is with the physical world, losing your laptop, leaving your phone on a train, house burglary, fire damage, and the biggest threat of all, yourself.
Keep calm and protect your digital currency?
- Using a VPN to guard your web connection (never connect from a coffee shop without VPN)
- Adding an additional entry safety layer with 2FA
- Use a trusted Firewall
- 16 character passwords
What about the high transfer rates?
This is simple, NiceHash allows free transfers to Coinbase, from Coinbase you then just transfer to GDAX (It is the same company), fees are tiny. A better alternative is probably Etoro that lets you use Paypal. But transaction fees appear to be high everywhere, so do your homework and be careful.
What wallet should I use?
NiceHash wallet acts as a good temporary storage so people can access their money faster, but that's it, you should look to move your money into a personal wallet or transfer it out using the method described above. There are so many wallets out there, but use the one that is the most reliable, not the one that looks the nicest (Exodus anyone?).
Some information I picked up about the Ledger Nano:
"The Ledger Nano S is not recommended to be used as mining wallet. Lots of “dust” transactions can make it unusable and you may end up recreating wallet and sending all tokens over from SW wallet."
https://ledger.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005165209-What-if-I-receive-coins-from-mining-activities-on-my-hardware-wallet-
As you progress as a fully fledged miner, you can find some excellent tutorials on YouTube, for example, there's a great video on how to set up 'Awesome Miner' to mine all sorts of coins. I wouldn't recommend this for a beginner, but there is life outside of NiceHash once you are comfortable with this new found skill and would like to learn more about how to do it yourself.
Hope you enjoyed this article, don't forget to comment if you'd like to know more or have something you'd like to add.
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