Ukrainian Police Close Illegal Mining Farm with 3800 PlayStation 4 Consoles

[Anymal]

Maybe if they were old pre patched PS2's before Sony took the ability to load linux away

@Chomiq I fail to see what this to do with this particular story those cpu's were probably destined for some shitty iNet/gaming cafe

Considering he is a Comiq, you failed badly.

 

[silentbogo]

I thought I heard someone (possibly here, possibly other sites) saying that using consoles to mine was a lie.

The thing is - you can mine on pretty much anything compute-compatible. The question is whether you should (at least under normal circumstances).


Up until now I wasn't keeping up with PS4 Linux development, so I did not even know that there's fully functional GPU acceleration and even a working AMDGPU-PRO driver.
Even so, the only reason this thing was viable even with stolen electricity, is probably because of stolen hardware as well.
Realistically, the best case scenario, is if they somehow managed to mine XMR, RVN, or VTC on these and achieved a performance level of at most 270X, it's still only gonna add up to ~$5/mo from each console (with a current rolling price on the used market at around $200).

Also, there's already an update to these news:
1) Given that СБУ also confiscated papers related to accounting and power usage, it is quite possible that power wasn't stolen in the first place(Vinnytsa oblenergo claims it wasn't stolen and it wasn't a mining operation). Our law enforcement tends to react first, and investigate later (e.g. guilty until proven innocent).
2) One of the more tech-savvy news outlets promptly noted that realistically this could've been a big botnet for online games(definitely more profitable and makes more sense than mining RVN or XMR at >2-3Y RoI not including operating expenses).

Given the ridiculousness of PS4 mining idea, I can also throw in a few more ideas on what this could've been used for: cheap Data center. With Gentoo fully operational, you can easily make more $$$ by renting out web hosts, or running a shitty unreliable VPS at below market price. Would be quite popular amongst fucktards "customers" that run spambots, hammering SBM servers and e-mail addresses, compile illegal databases for call centers, or scraping local fleebay and other eBoards for personal information (names/phones/contacts), which is a hu-u-u-u-u-uge problem in Ukraine. But given the technical competence of our security service (or even cyber-police), I doubt they'll even check what's on these PS4s.

 

[AusWolf]

How am I supposed to take mining seriously when crap like this happens?

Exactly that! Articles like this prove that the claim many people believe saying "crypto is our saviour from big fat companies and governments" is a lie. At least I fail to see how these illegal mining farms are better than a government-controlled currency. Unless someone thinks that stealing electricity to make a profit is better than governments collecting taxes, which would be quite weird in my opinion.

 

[Auer]

Thats a lot of extension cords...

 

[Chrispy_]

Oh wow, the PS4 is godawful at mining ETH, probably mining at a loss when paying for electricity, that's still about $0.50 per day on stolen electricity, so $1900 a day for the whole operation.

The real thing is that selling PS4s at $200 each (their market value right now) nets them three-quarters of a million dollars (if they were legally purchased). I'd take the money up front rather than risk not getting caught for theft of electricity over a 400-day period just to break-even with that. And at a conservative 100W per PS4, trying to hide the theft of 0.4 Megawatts can't be that easy.

 

[ThrashZone]

Thats a lot of extension cords...

Hi,
Yeah maybe switch to mining copper lol

 

[Hargema]

So THAT is why PS4 is still so overpriced even after the ps5 launch, damn it, and this is only one mining facility, go figure how many are there, they're leaving nothing unused..

 

[R-T-B]

So THAT is why PS4 is still so overpriced even after the ps5 launch, damn it, and this is only one mining facility, go figure how many are there, they're leaving nothing unused..

I doubt there's more than you can count on one hand besides this one, if any, for the reasons I outlined.

 

[silentbogo]

One more update, which makes things about 100x more confusing and makes about as much sense as a drunk gramps Andreyevich from my neighborhood:
Security Services claim that VOE and their director personally were intentionally mining crypto just for the sake of increasing the apparent electricity usage, all as a part of an evil plan to create a power deficit for this region and increase prices down the road. Basically they say that they were using power for the sake of using power. They also claim around 5-7bn UAH in damages(~185-260m USD).
Also, all of that extensive list of 3800 consoles, 500 GPUs and other trinkets includes hardware confiscated from suspect's homes, not just the warehouse.
I know, math is hard, but stay with me for a minute....
3800 PS4s at a maximum 150W only gives us ~5000 MWh over the course of 1 year
500 GPUs along with the rest of hardware can be generously rounded up to 200W per GPU, or another 900 MWh per year.
Let's be even more generous and round it up to 6000 MWh every year, in order to compensate for climate control, massage chairs, coffee makers and other operating necessities.
First I wanted to be very smug and take the highest tariff possible by today's Ukrainian market prices, but SSU f$#%ed up once again and officially listed it as class 2 industrial, which is 1150UAH/MWh for installations over 27.5kW (about half as cheap as residential, and even cheaper than business tariffs).
All together it only adds up to 6,900,000 UAH in damages per year (equiv 255,555USD), so even if they count all 3 years of "anomalous" usage from Friday's scary chart, it's barely over 20 million UAH in total damages, which is at least 250 times less than their claimed damages. Also, one farm like that is barely enough to put a dent into overall energy usage of the region (maybe a small village, but not an entire oblast'), let alone offset tariffs in a long-term. That scary chart may be actually real, but I'm 666% sure that this farm is incapable of causing such a deficit (heck, even 100 farms like that can't).

I don't wanna get political here, nor do I want to start a lengthy rant with lots of explicit words, but my two prevailing theories are:
1) Law enforcement can't count, and simply missed the mark by a factor of 250-300. Could be intentional, if they have no clue where all the powa's'gone and just need a scapegoat...
2) In the midst of 20% increase of electric power in August and all the following controversies, Ukrainian oligarchs are simply trying to create as much noise as possible to justify or prove the existence of "power deficit". "Blame miners" seems to work for everyone. I've been hearing about this shit for a long time, but only starting this summer I started to see more frequent reports of "busting the biggest ever" mining farm in one region or another. Previous ones were only as big as a typical warehouse shelving full of old ASICs, which isn't even bigger than some rigs in residential installations on YT. Barely big enough to cover a wall of a small abandoned utility shed near an old transformer station. I guess they ran out of dummy asics and had to spend a little cash on used PS4s.
As sad as it sounds, in my country both are a real possibility.

 

[mechtech]

That was me. I hadn't been properly updated I suppose, I don't claim that anymore. Consider it withdrawn.

To be fair, at the time in the discussion this was brought up, photos had not surfaced yet, so I claimed (correctly I'd argue given the evidence presented at the time) occam's razor said they were probably being scalped.

This is still dumb as rocks, because as I said elsewhere, regarding mining with consoles:


It's like mining on a very poor efficiency motherboard with a single weak gpu. People don't do this either.

Unless they are not paying for electricity and mom and dad are or someone else lol

 

[R-T-B]

Unless they are not paying for electricity and mom and dad are or someone else lol

They'll notice if you try this large-scale.

 

[mechtech]

They'll notice if you try this large-scale.

Yep. Unless it’s within the plant and off the grid

 

[R-T-B]

Yep. Unless it’s within the plant and off the grid

I think that would be limited in places you could get away with that, but yes.

 

[mechtech]

One more update, which makes things about 100x more confusing and makes about as much sense as a drunk gramps Andreyevich from my neighborhood:
Security Services claim that VOE and their director personally were intentionally mining crypto just for the sake of increasing the apparent electricity usage, all as a part of an evil plan to create a power deficit for this region and increase prices down the road. Basically they say that they were using power for the sake of using power. They also claim around 5-7bn UAH in damages(~185-260m USD).
Also, all of that extensive list of 3800 consoles, 500 GPUs and other trinkets includes hardware confiscated from suspect's homes, not just the warehouse.
I know, math is hard, but stay with me for a minute....
3800 PS4s at a maximum 150W only gives us ~5000 MWh over the course of 1 year
500 GPUs along with the rest of hardware can be generously rounded up to 200W per GPU, or another 900 MWh per year.
Let's be even more generous and round it up to 6000 MWh every year, in order to compensate for climate control, massage chairs, coffee makers and other operating necessities.
First I wanted to be very smug and take the highest tariff possible by today's Ukrainian market prices, but SSU f$#%ed up once again and officially listed it as class 2 industrial, which is 1150UAH/MWh for installations over 27.5kW (about half as cheap as residential, and even cheaper than business tariffs).
All together it only adds up to 6,900,000 UAH in damages per year (equiv 255,555USD), so even if they count all 3 years of "anomalous" usage from Friday's scary chart, it's barely over 20 million UAH in total damages, which is at least 250 times less than their claimed damages. Also, one farm like that is barely enough to put a dent into overall energy usage of the region (maybe a small village, but not an entire oblast'), let alone offset tariffs in a long-term. That scary chart may be actually real, but I'm 666% sure that this farm is incapable of causing such a deficit (heck, even 100 farms like that can't).

I don't wanna get political here, nor do I want to start a lengthy rant with lots of explicit words, but my two prevailing theories are:
1) Law enforcement can't count, and simply missed the mark by a factor of 250-300. Could be intentional, if they have no clue where all the powa's'gone and just need a scapegoat...
2) In the midst of 20% increase of electric power in August and all the following controversies, Ukrainian oligarchs are simply trying to create as much noise as possible to justify or prove the existence of "power deficit". "Blame miners" seems to work for everyone. I've been hearing about this shit for a long time, but only starting this summer I started to see more frequent reports of "busting the biggest ever" mining farm in one region or another. Previous ones were only as big as a typical warehouse shelving full of old ASICs, which isn't even bigger than some rigs in residential installations on YT. Barely big enough to cover a wall of a small abandoned utility shed near an old transformer station. I guess they ran out of dummy asics and had to spend a little cash on used PS4s.
As sad as it sounds, in my country both are a real possibility.

The additional money is for lawyers fees

 

[Chomiq]

Ukraine warehouse packed with thousands of PS4s was actually a FIFA Ultimate Team bot farm

A giant cryptocurrency farm in Ukraine that contained thousands of PlayStation 4 consoles was actually a FIFA bot farm.

www.eurogamer.net

According to an investigation by Ukraine business newspaper Delo, sparked by scepticism of the official claim about the farm being primarily about mining cryptocurrency, as well as the fact game discs can be seen protruding from PS4s in one of the pictures, what we're looking at in the photos is a bot farm that got stuck into the Ultimate Team grind, with the goal of selling accounts loaded up with in-game currency on the black market.

 

[ZoneDymo]

omg this update makes it even more hilarious, what a world we live in.

a game is made with grinding that we willingly partake in because THAT is the game, we are all collectors.
L4D was a game that had no unlocks, not ranks, no add ons, nothing, just a good game to play, but most games today have some leveling to them and we tend to play the games only for that because as soon as we have everything "There is no reason to play".

And now this, stealing energy to grind up accounts so you can sell them.....honestly imagine being hte developer of a game that this is being done for, the amount of energy completely wasted on nothing, the nothing that you created mind you, its just mindblowing.

 

[Keemzay]

They were mining rare fifa cards and selling them, that's what I heard, this website is outdated with its articles

 

[Why_Me]

If anything Ukrainians are resourceful.

 

[GRaFkiyv]

The favorite occupation of ukrainian energy companies-oligarchs is to impose a plan of electricity consumption on enterprises and then blackmail them: both for the increased consumption and for the underestimated consumption of electricity.

 

[mechtech]

I guess there must be a market for that?!?

“Hey John my wood shop went out of business……that’s too bad Steve. You should make some WoW or FIFA or something characters/cards/items/whatever and level them up and sell them. Good money in that…..”

lol the digital world we live in…….

 

[sepheronx]

I guess there must be a market for that?!?

“Hey John my wood shop went out of business……that’s too bad Steve. You should make some WoW or FIFA or something characters/cards/items/whatever and level them up and sell them. Good money in that…..”

lol the digital world we live in…….

the type of crap people will buy in these online games is astounding. Some Saudi guy purchased a $1M skin for a free game - Fortnite.

 

[silentbogo]

And now this, stealing energy to grind up accounts so you can sell them.....honestly imagine being hte developer of a game that this is being done for, the amount of energy completely wasted on nothing, the nothing that you created mind you, its just mindblowing.

Pretty sure EA gives two flying ducks about Vinnytsa's power shortages or children's gambling obsessions.

lol the digital world we live in…….

It ain't like we've never had this before. One of my old co-workers from 15+ years ago used to make more than his dayjob salary by leveling and selling Lineage II characters.
That's without even mentioning ridiculously huge markets for Guild Wars, WoW, CS:GO and others.