Plus there's mining hardware depreciation and obsolescence. Turning off and limiting your miners to mere eight hours a day loses its opportunity to breakeven on the hardware cost which must be done as quickly as possible. In this industry, cheap electricity is the biggest requirement to succeed. No access to cheap electricity means losing against the other more efficient miners who do have access. It would absolutely be more profitable to buy the DIP, and HODL with the capital and relax by being a passive investor.
i'm not even sure that if someone was able to get
free unlimited electricity that they would guaranteed to be profitable mining bitcoin. because the hardware costs is so high. the hardware might stop working before they break even.
Free and unlimited electricity? I believe you could mine using older and second-hand hardware if you're lucky to have such an advantage over other mining farms. Because we're talking hypotheticals, you probably could build a partnership with Jihan Wu and tell him to provide the ASICs and your provide the electricity for a 50-50 split on all mined Bitcoins. You're like a quasi-central-bank printing money for free to be distributed.