Illegal miners used an empty warehouse of an electricity supplier in Ukraine to connect to the electricity grid. Several thousand PS4 game consoles were used. But mining experiments were also allegedly carried out with its successor, the PlayStation 5.
In Ukraine, the investigative authorities struck a major blow against an illegally operated mining farm near the city of Vinnytsa. The domestic intelligence service SBU has in town according to own communication a large-scale electricity theft uncovered and documented. The perpetrators mined cryptocurrency in an abandoned warehouse belonging to the local electricity supplier. The Ukrainian law enforcement authorities found almost 5,000 computers there. Of these, a total of 3,800 were Playstation 5 predecessors.
According to preliminary estimates, monthly electricity theft losses for the state of Ukraine ranged from $ 186,200 to $ 259,300. Illegal activities of this magnitude can certainly lead to power outages and thus also to a large part of the Ukrainian population being cut off from the supply. Investigators only noticed the illegal mining farm in the first place because of such an overload of the power grid. Accordingly, the SBU initiated criminal proceedings for the theft of water, electricity or thermal energy through unauthorized use.
Mining on PlayStation 5 is actually not very efficient
The curious thing about this case in Ukraine is not only the dimension, but above all the extensive use of the PlayStation4 game console for mining. At first glance, this method seems unorthodox. When it comes to gaming computers and consoles, the miners naturally target their graphics cards and GPUs. The PS4 and PS4 Slim use a special AMD Radeon 7970M GPU. This is a little slower than the freely commercially available version. However, in crypto mining, memory bandwidth is more important than computing power. Nevertheless, the performance of the PS4 cannot be compared with that which can be achieved with top gaming GPUs. But these were apparently too expensive or too difficult to obtain for the criminals. The inefficiency of PS4 mining (according to an expert a console can only mine BTC for the equivalent of US $ 7.62 per month) made the massive electricity theft downright necessary.
New PS5 batch on the way?
The successor PlayStation 5 is inherently unsuitable for mining as well. According to internet sources A Chinese hacker consortium is said to have succeeded in mining ether. The message came out a little later than duck turns out. Speculations that the PS5 delivery bottlenecks are due to Bitcoin or Ethereum Miner are therefore completely unfounded. Scalpers are still the prime suspect. They buy new batches automatically by bot to sell them later at overpriced prices to gamblers who are itching to get their thumbs up.
Another rumor has it that the PlayStation 5 shortage in this country could also be related to the accident of the container ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal. Copies of the next-gen PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles will also be on board supposed. The European gaming community will not have any certainty until the end of July. Then the Ever Given, which was only allowed to continue its voyage on July 7th, will call at the port of Rotterdam. If you want to follow the cutter live, you can here to do.
Meanwhile, not only the PS4 and PS5 consoles, but also many high-end graphics cards are in short supply. Manufacturers like Nvidia know how popular their products are with both gamers and miners. The company therefore strives to achieve the balancing act and to do justice to both target groups.