$80,000 in power...$900k profit per year...Inside a large chinese Bitcoin mine

Here's a glimpse inside the new frontier of Bitcoin mining. Unfortunately, significant profitability is no longer achievable for those hobbyist miners and you can now see the birth of large scale industrial Bitcoin mining operations.

this particular documentary is provided by Motherboard and it covers one (of 6) location within a re purposed factory in the Liaoning Province in rural northeast China. 

Based on the video: 

• Qty 3000 hardware mining devices in use
• Qty 900 dead mining hardware devices
• Mining is generating 25 Bitcoins per day ($5700 USD). 
• Electricity costs $2700 USD per day ($80,000 per month).

Let's do some additional calculations....With back of the napkin accuracy

Initial Mining Setup Costs

• Intial setup of Qty 3000 KNC Neptune miners at $10,000 USD per miner calculates to $30 Million in hardware purchase. 
• Electicity setup is approx $300,000 per site.
• Qty 900 broken mining machines = approx $4 Million in hardware purchase
• Total of $34.3 Million per site * 6 Sites 
• Total of $205 Million in hardware and site setup fees.
  

Net Income

• Therefore, still a very profitable venture indeed....Gross profit of $3000 per day; not including rent, employee salary and other misc charges. 
• Estimating salary of $10 per hour ($240 per 24 hour day or $87,600 USD yearly) per employee (2 per site - 24 hours a day).
• Net profit calculation of around $2500 USD per day 
• Net profit of $912,500 USD per year per site.
• With 6 sites...Approx $5.5M in net (tax free) income per year. 
  

Quick Breakeven Analysis

• However, when you add the initial hardware costs...Looks like a break even of 37 years...Hopefully there is an error in the quick math above...or they will be waiting for a return on investment for a long long time.