Freshly mined coins have a premium because they are clean (i.e. you are 100% sure they haven't been robbed before, which can create problems) and untraceable (i

Freshly mined coins have a premium because they are clean (i.e. you are 100% sure they haven't been robbed before, which can create problems) and untraceable (i.e. there's no way to link them to the original assets used to purchase the miners). Other than that, a person might not have access to the equivalent volume of BTC but have easy access to energy/miners. Additionally, depending on how you predict hash rate and BTC price to evolve, mining might have a better ROI.