How NiceHash Helps Miners Stay Compliant with the 60-Day Rule

NiceHash is a service provider, not a wallet provider, which means that, due to regulatory reasons, it is unable to hold users' funds for more than 60 days.

Because of this, any funds that are in an account for longer than 50 days must be withdrawn to an Individual wallet. This applies to every individual transaction, and the check is performed every week. Inactive funds that are scheduled for the move can be seen in the Wallet tab. Users also get an email notification a few days before the scheduled transfer.

In order to help users comply with this requirement, NiceHash lowered the withdrawal limit from 0.0005 BTC to 0.0002 BTC for the automated 60-day Individual wallet transactions. However, transactions to Individual wallets must be seen on the blockchain and thus also involve blockchain transaction costs.
If the inactive balance is less than 20,000 satoshis, the balance will be less than the minimum transfer amount and will be deducted as an Inactive Fund Fee.

This can result in smaller miners not reaching the threshold, which results in them paying the fee instead. However, NiceHash offers several solutions that enable smaller miners to comply with the 60-Day Rule (while also avoiding fees).

1. Profit splitting allows users to set up automatic withdrawals to a Lightning network address. 
This means mining payments are automatically sent to the address set, so funds are not stored in the NiceHash account. This method also benefits from the low Lightning network transaction costs, which usually range from completely free to a few satoshis, as well as low Lightning network withdrawal thresholds, which means even the smallest miners can send funds using this method.
2. Manually withdrawing funds via the Lightning network. Manual withdrawals allow users to use Lightning network addresses, as well as Lightning network Invoices, which allows for withdrawals to wallets or platforms that only support Lightning network Invoices.
3. Raising the payout threshold. Raising the mining payout threshold to the 0.0002 BTC automated 60-day individual wallet transaction threshold will result in every mining payment being high enough to be transferred to the individual wallet. However, this means payments are less frequent. The method also requires continuous mining otherwise, payments will be processed at a lower/default threshold.

Practical Examples

Example 1: Weekly mining payments are above the 0.0002 BTC threshold, so the funds are sent to the individual wallet.

Example 2: Weekly mining payments are below the 0.0002 BTC threshold, but the user has Profit splitting enabled, so each transaction is immediately withdrawn to the set Lightning network address. The NiceHash wallet balance is 0, so the 60-Day Rule does not apply.

Example 3: Weekly mining payments are below the 0.0002 BTC threshold, the user doesn't have Profit splitting enabled, and did not withdraw the funds manually, so the Inactive fund fee is applied.