Dear IceDrill shareholders.
This is an attempt at a comprehensive update on the state of affairs surrounding the IceDrill project (owned and maintained by Digimex). To achieve a minimal amount of privacy I created a dedicated user account to facilitate communication for this project. As the geeks may have noticed my user ID forms the initial part of a funding transaction for the IceDrill project and the people involved in this project know my real world identity. (
https://blockchain.info/tx/29750f0e1c2fbb3bb11f1355a2770b306ff2e15596dd0f1aa3fd93c4a5293d16)
Update:
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The project is currently undergoing financial consolidation. The most significant change is that four self selected main backers (public shareholders) have agreed to participate in a 4o7 multisignature wallet solution to maintain the current funds (
https://blockchain.info/address/3N9MiKtPiAShS8tJMTpYocXTXRBSkQ2rpg). 2 keys are held by Willem van Rooyen, 2 keys are held by me, and each of the remaining 3 keys are held by the other 3 public shareholders, respectively. The current solution is that spending of funds is facilitated by the cooperation of Willem and me, while any dispute requires a majority of the 3 remaining shareholders to agree.
Additional to financial consolidation, the project will also undergo an internal audit. This goes beyond the book keeping efforts started in January/2014 and will investigate the good faith portion of maintaining the funds in the best interest of the shareholders. The current conclusion is that while some inefficiencies have occurred, the funds were maintained appropriately. The current timeline is that the audit will start now and should conclude within the next 2 months. A sanitized version will be available to all shareholders and will detail which funds have been used on which aspects of the project.
Digimex forms part of the committee of unsecured creditors in the HashFast bankruptcy case and as such is involved in finding an optimal solution for creditor restitution. This is a slow process which mainly caused by 2 facts: HashFast is and has been uncooperative and the mining market has turned into a negative cash flow environment for most mining companies. The good news is that this gives the current officers more time to find a business solution to monetizing the bankruptcy estate, the bad news is that it doesn't provide any immediate relief for creditors, including Digimex.
Some funds were used as part of a refocusing effort to fund the development of pool software. In due time Willem should be able to provide a status update on that.
Out of the 5 founders of the project (private shareholders: Willem van Rooyen, Ludvig Öberg, David Shin, Lourens Vorster, Felix Ng), effectively only Willem is left working in the interest of IceDrill shareholders. Lourens Vorster has exited the project early in its lifetime in October 2013, while David Shin and Felix Ng were involved through their focused effort on establishing a trading platform (cryptomex) until Feburary 2014, but have stopped contributing since then. This mass exodus was likely caused by the funding layout of the project, where public shareholders carried all capital expenditures and the founders understood their role as a service to customers (IceDrill investors). Once it became apparent that the project would suffer a catastrophic collapse of mining revenue for the known reasons, the prospect of easy money vanished, which put additional strain on the relationship between private and public shareholders.
The attempt to migrate the project towards the new trading platform cryptomex has led to some divide in the shareholder landscape, which more or less resulted in an overwhelming set of data to process shareholder payouts. This problem needs to be remedied by a unified solution. It is currently investigated which path to take and whether a final claims process needs to be initiated. The current consensus is to establish a schedule and release payouts out of the existing funds to full fill the original agreement to the best of our current capacity.
The private shareholders were repeatedly encouraged to communicate the current efforts transparently to all shareholders. The failure to do so and the inaction and action on some of the business issues may be construed as bad faith in the eye of individual beholders. That said, I’d like to inform everyone that the business situation Digimex found itself in was NOT easy. Digimex virtually went all in with its purchase of HashFast equipment and received no tangible securities in return. One can only assume that there were promises exchanged which never came to fruition due to the catastrophic collapse of HashFast itself. Additional to that, early efforts to secure a low-cost mining facility failed and Digimex decided to enter a 210USD/kWmonth hosting contract for a minimum commitment of 150 kW/month, a minimum length of 1 year and a downpayment of ~2000 BTC. When HashFast failed to deliver, Digimex found itself with huge monthly liabilities, no cash flow and no reserves. When public shareholders started looking at the company in January all the fatal decisions have already been made and Willem was struggling to get a cash flow established by picking up machines one by one from CIARA.
Some of the equipment has been exchanged for IceDrill shares and is reflected as a reduction in shareholder liability on the financial statement already in January/2014. The 210USD/kWmonth contract has been terminated to the earliest date possible since it’s continuation would have resulted in a negative cash-flow situation. It was discussed whether it is best to offer an additional round of equipment/shares exchange, but due to serendipitous circumstances we were able to find a location to run the equipment at the best possible rate in the current market, starting as soon as possible. Thus, the equipment is currently migrated towards a low-cost mining environment and is expected to yield a positive cash flow for the remainder of it’s existing lifetime.
I ask IceDrill shareholders to evaluate the situation and the information presented here with a grain of salt as it is still developing, especially with the HashFast bankruptcy proceedings being publicly traceable and it having a major impact on the fate of Digimex. I wished the private shareholders would be more forthcoming with communicating their effort themselves. Instead I offer voice and ear for public shareholders and remain available from now on to answer questions to the best of my knowledge and listen and act upon concerns.
