Kodak latest to go crypto

Written by Mark Evans

10/01/2018

Historic photographic company Eastman Kodak has seen its shares lift by 120 per cent revealing plans to mint its own crypto-currency.

Kodak follows a line of business (see Long Island Iced Tea) in showing interest in crypto-currencies and seeing an immediate share price rise, with the KodakCoin being created around photographers’ image rights management on its bespoke KODAKOne platform.

Utilising blockchain technology, the KODAKOne platform will create an encrypted, digital ledger of rights ownership for photographers to register both new and archive work that they can then license within the platform.

KODAKCoin will then allow participating photographers to receive payment for licensing their work immediately upon sale, and for both professional and amateur photographers, with the KODAKOne platform providing continual web crawling in order to monitor and protect the IP of the images registered on the system.

“For many in the tech industry, ‘blockchain’ and ‘cryptocurrency’ are hot buzzwords, but for photographers who’ve long struggled to assert control over their work and how it’s used, these buzzwords are the keys to solving what felt like an unsolvable problem,” said Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke. “Kodak has always sought to democratise photography and make licensing fair to artists. These technologies give the photography community an innovative and easy way to do just that.”

The initial coin offering will open on 31 January 2018, supported by London-based WENN Digital.

The company has also revealed plans to harness excess energy at its headquarters in Rochester, New York for Bitcoin mining rigs. Called the Kodak KashMiner these plans were released at the CES.