Thank you for the clarification. I hadn't noticed these were also public shares and was under the impression that they were private.
Although I do agree that this is not worth making a fuss about, as an investor, I would be much more comfortable if the amounts and discounts needed to qualify for the "block sales" had been made public at the very start. After all, I might have qualified for a slight discount if I had asked.
Still, this is not meant as a serious criticism to Ice Drill managers. Being involved with enterprise level devices, I know it is quite a common practice for an entity to offer volume discounts only when asked for them or when said entity expects the customer might choose a competitors product, because of a better price offer. There exists such thing as a "list price" for a reason.
In your reasoning you assume that mining will remain profitable for a long enough time that 0.0016 btc will actually be paid as dividends. It is absolutely not clear whether any of the companies starting now will ever be profitable. And in that case the only way to make a profit is to sell your shares cheaper than you bought them.
Yes, I do assume that. But this is irrelevant to my reasoning. In the case of the mine not generating enough returns to pay the 0.0016/share, the public investors would get at least some of their money back. The private investors would get exactly 0.0 satoshis per share. That still seems to be quite in favour of the public investors.
The reason I think this is relevant is that if mining fails to create dividends comparable to the IPO share price then the only way one can make a significant profit is to sell the shares for a profit. And here the private investors clearly have an advantage. Although at this point it is only speculation, I strongly believe that none of the mining companies starting now will create mining income comparable to the IPO share price. (Hardware sales can possibly remain profitable a bit longer.)