After fishing for the power of “the temple”, a gang bought… 3,800 PS4s to mine coins

Recently, Ukraine’s Security Service said it had caught red-handed a “biggest ever cryptocurrency mining camp in Ukraine” located in the city of Vinnytsia, more than 200km from the capital Kyiv.

Here, the police seized more than 5000 different computing devices used to mine cryptocurrencies. Besides familiar devices such as CPUs or GPUs for PCs, one also finds a huge number of converted PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles. The specific number may shock you: 3,800 machines.

Although consoles like the PS4 have essentially the same hardware structure as a PC, currently, not many people think about mining cryptocurrency on it due to limitations coming from both hardware and software. . However, at a time when PC components are becoming scarce (especially GPUs), perhaps taking advantage of older console models and having an abundant supply is probably not a bad idea.

PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 5.5 Gbps. On a 256-bit memory interface, the PS4 delivers up to 176 GBps of memory bandwidth. Meanwhile, the PS4 Pro has memory running at 6.8 Gbps, delivering up to 217.6 GBps. For comparison, the Radeon RX 580, one of the most popular GPUs among miners, has a memory throughput of 256 GBps. Thus, if based on hardware power alone, a PS4 Pro has the ability to mine virtual currency close to the Radeon RX 580 GPU.

However, the real reason why the above mining gang was “touched” by the Ukrainian government is not because of too much PS4 possession, but from the illegal use of electricity. Specifically, this mining camp is located at an old warehouse of an electricity supply company in Ukraine named Vinnitsaoblenergo. As a result, the owner of this cryptocurrency mining camp can operate the “buffalo plow” system, including the above 3,800 PS4, without worrying about electricity costs.

According to preliminary estimates by the government, the monthly loss of money from the illegal use of electricity by the above gang could be up to 7 million Hryvnia, equivalent to nearly 6 billion Vietnamese dong. In addition, the consumption of a large amount of electricity can cause a quarter of the households living in Vinnytsia city to lose power.

The Security Service of Ukraine has stated that it is in the process of investigating to determine who was involved in the illegal activity, which includes officials at the company Vinnytsiaoblenergo.