Personally I'd calculate KNC if it's profitable or not by $ not BTC. Since it was purchased by fiat and not bitcoins (paypal/bank transfer etc).
Too bad for all the suckers who paid in bitcoins though, eh? Especially since you can't get a bitcoin refund.
It doesn't really matter how you pay. If you sell bitcoins and then pay with paypal, it's the same as if you used bitpay (at least in terms of your own balance sheet).
Using btc to buy a miner is a hedge against btc prices temporarily dropping. If prices drop, mining becomes easier, so you can recover more bitcoins. Personally I spent about 15% of my btc on mining equip for this purpose. At this point it's not looking like a winning bet, but there's plenty of ways it could turn around.