The last few days there seems to be an interesting photo of what is said to be PlayStation 5 (PS5) game console hacked to mine Ethereum (ETH) achieving a hashrate of 98.76 MH/s with a custom mining software. The image has apparently originated from China and the text is in Chinese, but it turns out this was a fake image and the 2D barcode reveals the joke somebody tried to play on everyone. If you read the 2D barcode with your smartphone it will reveal the following text in Chinese language:
娱乐而已并没有此软件哈哈哈
For people that do not understand a word from the above, passing it through Google Translate to see what it means in English translates to the following:
There is no such software for entertainment hahaha
So, no the PlayStation 5 game console is not yet turned into a crypto mining machine for Ethereum (ETH), though it is not entirely impossible for this to happen, considering the gaming console has very good hardware from AMD in the form a Ryzen CPU and a RDNA 2 GPU inside and that can in theory be used for mining with the right software.
The software side on the console for the moment however is pretty closed, so developing a crypto miner is the hard thing to do and nobody apparently made one, otherwise something like 50 MH/s hashrate for Ethash might not be impossible if the hardware is properly utilized.
Maybe we could see PS5 mining farms in the not-so-distant future if the crypto mining craze continues, but for now it is not that time yet. Console gamers are already not very happy with the PlayStation 5 shortages at the moment with the device not easily obtainable even at a premium over the recommended end user price. If the console becomes an attractive crypto mining device it will become even harder being a gamer and wanting to get a PS5 game console.