NiceHash Miners Captured a Payrate Nearly 17% Above FPPS

On 29 October 2026, miners selling SHA256AsicBoost hashrate on the NiceHash BTC market earned up to 16.93% more than the FPPS benchmark. For a few hours, the same hashrate was worth considerably more on NiceHash than the chain-based benchmark.

At 20:30 UTC, the NiceHash payrate reached 0.49847 BTC/EH/day, while the FPPS benchmark stood at 0.42630 BTC/EH/day.

Why did this happen?

NiceHash is a spot marketplace. Buyers compete for hashrate in real time, and when they bid above the FPPS benchmark, miners earn more for the same work.

Sometimes we can identify what drove a spike; other times, buyers keep their strategies private. This time, the launch of ECX, a hard fork of Bitcoin, is a plausible explanation:

• Same hardware. ECX keeps Bitcoin's SHA-256 proof of work, so the same ASICs can mine it.
• Cheap early blocks. ECX launched with its mining difficulty reset to the minimum, which made hashrate unusually valuable to anyone mining the new chain in its first hours.
• Timing. ECX forked from Bitcoin at block 973,728, around 19:00–19:15 UTC. The NiceHash premium rose sharply around 19:00 UTC and peaked at 20:30 UTC.

The timing supports a connection, but it does not prove the cause.

What about the difficulty adjustment?

Block 973,728 was also a scheduled Bitcoin difficulty adjustment. Difficulty rose by roughly 6%, which lowered the FPPS benchmark. That accounts for part of the gap, not all of it. Before the adjustment, FPPS was around 0.450 BTC/EH/day, so the peak NiceHash payrate was still about 11% higher than the benchmark miners had seen earlier that day.

Specialist buyers do the research, miners get the upside

Specialist buyers track new chains, shifting difficulty and opportunities to sell newly mined coins, then price hashrate accordingly. Farm operators benefit from that competition without researching every fork, running new-chain infrastructure or managing additional coins.

Earnings for your work, with room for upside

With Real-Time Pay-Per-Share (RTPPS), miners earn for every valid, accepted share, without waiting for a buyer to find a block. The buyer takes the block-luck risk.

Arbitrage buyers also have a reason to buy hashrate whenever its price falls below expected pool returns. That tends to keep prices on NiceHash close to FPPS.

Improve efficiency, too

For supported Antminers, NiceHash Firmware adds automatic tuning to optimize power consumption and hashrate. Operators can target a power draw or a hashrate, and NiceHashTools handles deployment across many machines.

Connect your ASICs in three steps

1. Create and verify your NiceHash account.
2. Get your BTC-market connection details from the Stratum Generator.
3. Enter the stratum URL and your mining address in your ASIC's configuration.

Follow the ASIC setup guide →

The 16.93% figure is a temporary premium over the FPPS index at its peak, not a full-day earnings increase. Over the full 24 hours, the average premium was +1.22%. Net earnings depend on fees and accepted work.