How does it come that Chinese miners are mining for free?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/43opxy/does_anyone_know_what_the_chinese_miners_are/According to Charlie Lee, a large number of Chinese miners have zero cost for electricity. Instead, they have entered into profit-sharing agreements with the small, mostly hydro-based providers.
The percentage was, of course, not revealed. A situation like that allows for infinite scaling, up or down, to the capacity of the provider and makes it virtually impossible for anyone anywhere else to compete for hashpower.
It's not something that I'll personally be negotiating this week, but surely it's not totally inconceivable for some entities outside of China to enter into profit-sharing agreements with hydro-based providers