Ice Rock Mining ICO Report - is it a scam?

 Note: the following is not investment advice, just my opinion, and like any investment, never invest more than you are willing to lose.

Ice Rock Mining offer an opportunity to invest in cryptocurrency mining, using their unique low cost setup. They mine bitcoin/altcoins in a old soviet bunker cave built inside a mountain, which maintains an average temperature of 10-12C all year round (so cooling costs are minimal), has very cheap electricity ($0.03 per kWh), and they own the cave so there is no rent to pay.

Main benefits:
Current return on investment (ROI) rate of 20% per month (can go up/down). Note that the calculator on their website does not reflect the current rate of return as it was programmed when the price of bitcoin was higher.
Passive income (just sit back and enjoy the profits)
Lifetime contract
50% share of profit, and they reinvest 20% back into mining equipment, thus gradually increase their mining power and your profit share.
If you want, you can sell your investment share/tokens in the future

Please see their website for further information.

##########

Short summary: If you do not have time to read what follows, my conclusion is that they are NOT a scam. If you appreciate the many many hours I put into this research, then please upvote me and signup to Ice Rock Mining using my referral link, so we can profit together:
https://ico.icerockmining.io/Account/Register?stcRef=f93764e6-ceae-4c0d-ab61-9435566e6896
Also those who sign up using my referral link will have access to future forensic analysis reports, so we can make more good investments together. Enjoy!

##########

I first came across Ice Rock Mining via a video advert. It sounded interesting but too good to be true so I decided to examine their website. If I was going to invest my money I had to be sure these guys were legit, so I did A LOT of research. The following is just a sample of the pertinent information from my forensic analysis (evidenced links included).

What did I study?
I read their entire website, checked all documents contained on it, examined all associated links from their website, watched every video about ice rock mining on youtube and comments, read all forum posts about them I could find, and their social network posts (e.g. twitter, facebook etc), joined and observed their telegram group for a few weeks, contacted them using various ways, and messaged various people who talked about them in the early days from their first ICO.

Who is the owner?
The domain name icerockmining.io is registered by Malik Murzashev (CEO, DOB: 7th June 1987) on 14th Aug 2017 until 14th Aug 2018 [reference]. The short domain registration length is a small concern but this is not uncommon among companies, as it can simply be renewed in future.
It is hosted on a server hosting another two organizations, one about political asylum in the USA (which may or may not be related to Malik), and an audit firm which is linked to Malik, registered 27th Nov 2014. This latter domain registration also contains the registrant address [reference]. The audit firm website also contains several official state registration and license certificates.
In their youtube videos it is mentioned Malik owns an Apples store(selling technology products and Apple products),  domain registered on 9th Feb 2008 till present [reference]. This is true and is a long established business with much past activity on google, facebook, twitter etc. This is a VERY good sign of legitimacy.

Where are they located?
They provide the co-ordinates of their cave on their website (43.879891, 76.326797). Google maps link // Bing maps link (zoom in on map to inspect)
When the maps are analyzed with the following three of their youtube videos (link 1, link 2, link 3), you will note they seem to match. The path taken and location of the cave is shown below: 

 You can also see lots of pictures of the cave and surrounding area HERE, before ice rock mining converted it. You will also note from their youtube videos of the cave, they show clear progress in its development which is a good sign. They have clearly been working on it for a while. They also offer visitors the chance to visit their cave if arranged beforehand (you can see a video here where investor, and now also their PR manager, Amir Ness visits them). I was able to confirm Amir Ness did speak at the Planet Blockchain conference in Dubai on Sat. 30th Jan 2018 about ice rock mining [reference].

Ice Rock Mining office address: office 79, 49 hajimukana almaty (the owners of this building can be found HERE). You will note from their office video it is a loft style office and the total number of rooms in the building is 80, suggesting that 79 would be at the top, making it fit.
TEL:  +7 707 303 0310

What is the feedback from investors from their first ICO? (which they used to provide mining contracts only, not like this current 2nd ICO)

1) I did not find evidence of them not paying out on mining contracts from their first ico (which began with a few days delay in late December 2017). I also did not find any evidence posted by those claiming it is a scam. Simply the claim “scam”.
However, there did seem to be evidence of some disgruntled investors who missed out on the mining contracts of their choice from the first ico, and having to wait until the next batch of miners to be delivered to begin mining. I imagine it would be difficult to predict demand for each type of mining in advance, so this issue is pretty understandable.
2) There also did seem to be evidence of some unhappy investors from their first ico Ice rock mining who were promised a buyback of $2 for every rock1 token, on Feb 1st 2018, as this was delayed to Feb 5th, and the buyback was done under market economics, meaning they bought back rock1 tokens from whoever offered the lowest rates first up until $2 (e.g. if someone offered them at $1.70 they would buyback these first before buying those priced higher up until $2, until their monthly buyback funds were depleted).
The next buyback will be on March 1st 2pm GMT+6 on etherdelta.
3) Crucially, there was evidence of investors who were critical of them at first due to the above but after the buyback took place were happy, indicating the buyback did happen.

[Some references for the above: one, two, three, four, five]

Are they and will they payout to investors? The critical question!
Ice rock mining released a report about their current mining operation (end of Dec to end of Jan). In it, it says the amount available for the 2pm Feb 5th 2018 GMT+6 buyback is $34,096 USD. I visited the etherdelta exchange before the buyback was set to begin and took a screenshot of the Rock1 sell trades, shown below. 

 The following calculations are estimates only:
Total number of Rock removed/bought = 554+6292+3000+91.124+1000+1427+1090 = 13454.124
Approx cost of Rock tokens bought in ETH = 0.9029646+10.2553308+6+0.1913604+2.199999+3.1394+2.398 = 25.0870548
Approx cost of Rock tokens bought in USD = 25.0870548*~810 = ~$20,320.51 (does not include transactions fees)

Estimated shortfall = 34,096 - 20,320 = $13,776 USD

Etherscan analysis suggests Ice Rock Mining used this account for the buyback (not possible to confirm):
https://etherscan.io/address/0xffad7c4f9a7ddf47083084c5a566e4650e4d019a
(shows 41.999 ETH was transferred to etherdelta, with approx value of 41.999*~810 = $34,019.19)
This amount roughly matches their buyback funds stated above. Without evaluating the etherdelta Rock token trade logs it is not possible to confirm exact figures.

The above account is linked to the following accounts which show healthy transfers of funds:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x08137fa7438895145d03bea510b804ac762f6cdb
https://etherscan.io/address/0x4c6bd07a7ed9657576c35e68e99b05f90938f4db
https://etherscan.io/address/0x50db3cbbc83790ffc4741edad06b2a4bea26749a

The results indicate the buyback did occur, however more transparency is needed from Ice Rock Mining to confirm the amounts.

Final Notes
In case anyone thinks I work on behalf of Ice Rock Mining, I will now outline what I regard as some of the potential future issues:
1) their electricity contract price is for approx. 5 years, after which they will have to negotiate again for a new one. This could increase their costs.
2) bitcoin price seems to be on a short term downward trend but long term upward trend, thus the ROI stated in their website calculator (which does not use the current bitcoin price) will likely be lower for the short term. Unfortunately, startups have a tendency to overstate and under deliver sometimes.
3) their company structure is not simple. The ICO is apparently being managed by Woodland Networks L.P. which is registered in Northern Ireland. Which was setup by KINTARO SOLUTIONS LLP (Nothern Ireland), Bondwest AG and Entervox AG based in the Marshall islands. Original registrant seems to be Askar Karimov. Elaborate company setups are not uncommon among larger companies, with the most common reasons being for tax efficiency purposes and privacy [see their explanation here]. They do seem to be open about information most of the time, which is a good sign.
4) going forward, auditing of mining and buyback payments should be improved, ideally by an independent 3rd party
5) they have stated if the cave reaches full capacity (5000 ASICS to mine bitcoin) they will expand to an outside building but this may be less efficient, i.e. require building, more cooling and security, compared to the setup inside the cave.

##########

Conclusion
The strongest positive evidence is that they are who they say they are, and they are where they say they are located. The teething problems experienced by them in their first ICO were minor and to be expected from a startup. They certainly have room for improvement however.

I give them a forensic analysis score of 4/5, which is above average.

If you appreciate the many many hours I put into this research, then please upvote me and signup to Ice Rock Mining using my referral link, so we can profit together:
https://ico.icerockmining.io/Account/Register?stcRef=f93764e6-ceae-4c0d-ab61-9435566e6896
Also those who sign up using my referral link will have access to future forensic analysis reports, so we can make good investment decisions together. Enjoy!

Note: All content linked to from this page has been saved and archived in a folder, to serve as future record if needed.