No, the PS5 is not being used for cryptocurrency mining

Cryptocurrency mining has become a controversial topic in the gaming industry recently.

Ethereum mining can be quite profitable, but it requires an enormous amount of processing power to do. Miners have bought the latest line of NVIDIA's RTX 30 Series graphics cards, competing with actual gamers for these highly sought after products.

Much like the RTX 30 Series cards, the PlayStation 5 is also an equally powerful piece of hardware. This has led to reports of the PS5 being used to mine cryptocurrency, but is it true?

Don't fall for PS5 cryptomining joke

Surfacing on the internet over the weekend, a recent image alleged to show the PS5 as being cracked for cryptocurrency mining. The image shows the PS5 using the Ethereum mining program NBMiner_36.1, with a hash rate of a whopping 98.76 MH/s.

That hash rate itself is already enough to suggest this image is fake, as AMD's RX 5700 XT - a GPU similar to that in the PS5- only has a hash rate of 50.43 MH/s according to Better Hash.

However, the final nail in the coffin comes from the QR code to the left of the program. When scanned, it comes up with the following text: "娱乐而已并没有此软件哈哈哈"

Translated into English, this means: "There is no such software for entertainment hahaha."

READ MORE: Will the RTX 3060 actually stop cryptocurrency mining?

Could the PS5 mine cryptocurrency?

To mine cryptocurrency on the PS5, miners would first have to hack the PlayStation 5. The PS5 could be cracked, but as pointed out on NeoGaf, if miners wanted to crack a next-gen console, they would likely target the Windows-based Xbox Series X first.

However, the question is then: would the PS5 be worth mining Ethereum on? The answer: probably not. Compared to the more powerful GPUs, the PS5 would have a pretty low hash rate that would probably mean miners would not see the next-gen console as worth mining on.

Prospective PS5 owners can let out a sigh of relief. It looks like you won't need to compete with cryptocurrency miners for the PS5 - just the scalpers..

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