Something I just noticed today is the copyright at the bottom of the screen on my L3's. The miner software is copyright 2013-2014. So it would seem that Bitmain has been sitting on the scrypt mining software for a while. Just thought I would pass that along as food for thought. 
They probably mined in house with the L1 all these years. Figures.I think you are correct. This they would have put to use a long time ago. It raises more questions about crypto currencies as a whole considering nobody has been able to compete at these low prices.