Check out this post
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63031992
It says that 1/6 of the miners who use Hive OS for video cards mine coins that are not profitable to mine due to ASICs
https://hiveon.com/statistics/
I wouldn’t mine these coins even with free electricity, but we see these statistics.
Yep fascinating stuff, I bet a considerable percentage of those is by people who don't pay the electricity bills or steal subsidized energy (like school, state office, etc), in that case they are literally mining for free.
There are ways around it, especially in the developing world, even in my country part of the electricity bill is paid to the government in the form of "subsidizing illegal usage", meaning legitimate users have to pay for the illegal energy use in the country... I can guarantee part of those illegals are mining crypto, usually deep in the country side where it's hard to police by the government...
A smart miner will use cheap electricity more wisely rather than mine the least profitable coins. I don't know why miners do this.