[Synaesthesia]

Every hour 25 bitcoins are mined, at a current value of $450, that's $11250. So if the total power expenditure of bitcoin hashing is 600MW, it would have to cost less than $11250/600 = $18.75/MWH for electricity to not mine at a loss, which is insanely cheap.

Therefore the hashing chips must be considerably more efficient than the latest commercially available products. I think the major players get hashing chips manufactured at scale on smaller nodes for significant power savings.

[cdumler]

Actually, the present value is the consideration of the future value of the return: PV = FV / (1+r)^n. Anyone who is bit mining now is willing to do it at discount on the assumption the coins will have greater value in the future. I'm not surprised at all that it's being mined below cost.