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Kodak shares up as it announces KODAKCoin cryptocurrency
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- SippinLean 9y ago>The initial coin offering...is open to accredited investors Is this fairly common now? Most of the ICOs I've read about before were basically open to everyone.
- wrs 9y agoMost of the ICOs you’ve read about may well be illegal.
- abritinthebay 9y agoThis is SEC rules for ICOs. ICOs that don't have that limit are a) likely scams or at best b) probably a gigantic legal mess.
- SippinLean 9y agoHas this always been the case (ICOs are only open to the accredited), or does this only apply to ICOs after the SEC's Dec 11th, 2017 statement?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- abritinthebay 9y agoAll of them, always, though there was no official guidance for a while most knowledgable people in the space have been saying that for... at least a year. Of course they got yelled down by the gold-rushers... but it was nevertheless true.
- lurr 9y agoExcept US citizens, in a lot of cases. Reason is they want to avoid SEC Wrath for sketchy shit.
- EnFinlay 9y agoIn some respects this seems like a better application of blockchain than a lot of ICOs. On the other hand, it isn't clear how they're going to solve the oracle problem of deciding who has the canonical rights to a given photograph.
- r00fus 9y agoDoes it matter to them? It could be they're setting themselves up to be realtors for a land-grab.
- SkyMarshal 9y agoWithout having read the details (I cbf) I assume Kodak is the sole oracle here and the problem is solved by you trusting them to reliably provide accurate data to the chain. Which technically negates the entire point of a blockchain here, but it's a lot more sexy to be using a blockchain than a database.
- wibblewobble 9y agoAhh someone spots the emperor is naked!
- ihsw2 9y agoThe shtick is "efficiently managing the post-licensing process" which basically translates to automatically debiting KODAKCoins instead of issuing DMCA take-downs. Seems like a great way to throw debt collectors onto the whole IP protection mess. Sounds like hot garbage.
- viridian 9y ago>Utilizing 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. With KODAKCoin, participating photographers are invited to take part in a new economy for photography, receive payment for licensing their work immediately upon sale, and for both professional and amateur photographers, sell their work confidently on a secure blockchain platform. There is no use case that KODAKCoin meets that other cyrptos don't, except that it's owned in house by Kodak. I really hate this trend of companies trying to create their own nonsense currency and then justifying it with "blockchain is great!". If blockchain was the reason you could just transact in almost any currency that isn't bitcoin (because fees). There's no new technology here, it's just Kodak trying to ride the free money wave of cryptocurrency speculation. Pulling rights fees automatically could be accomplished via smart contracts, and without the mess of 'debt' being involved.
- abritinthebay 9y agoThis was always going to be the end result of blockchain and cryptocurrency. It was one of the original criticisms of the tech - that "every company would make it's own coin". Smart Contracts are never going to be as popular because they are neither very smart or the same as regular contracts - and have more overhead and larger vunerability anyhow.
- jey 9y agoAnd then they'll all fail, and people will again realize that simply appending ".com" or "blockchain" isn't actually a miraculous panacea. Meanwhile, legitimate uses of ".com" and "blockchain" will still continue to develop and grow.
- lomnakkus 9y agoYeah, it's not called the Hype Cycle for nothing[1]. Not sure about the latter part of your post -- I'm sure there are legitimate uses of blockchain tech, but on the other hand I'm sure I've seen any yet, personally. EDIT: [1] Actually, it's pretty weird that this is even a thing given how interested we (as effectors of "tech") SHOULD be (but aren't) in how all of this has gone before. Granted, blockchains are a relatively recent invention, but just because it's technically doesn't mean that it's actually meaningfully different in effect/politics/etc.
- zerostar07 9y agoIt's really sinister of these companies to do ICOs when the coin doesn't give you ownership of the company
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> the coin doesn't give you ownership of the company Why would you give something up when there are pools of dumb money willing to take nothing?
- tn_ 9y agolol, this is dumb that adding a cryptocurrency would have that profound impact on their stock. Just pay them in USD or some other currency with real-world proven value.
- CrankyBear 9y agoYeah, but that wouldn't move their stock price by a single red cent. This is also about profiting from hype. Viewed that way, it's a rip-roaring success. In every other way, it's stupid.
- whoisjuan 9y agoEuphoria and bounded rationality... People see Crypto + Public Traded Company and they lose their shit. Especially true for a company that has struggled so much to compete in the market for the last 15 years...
- searine 9y agoShort kodak.
- GFischer 9y agoWhy? They're using the blockchain for what most people said it was supposed to be used. I'm actually pleasantly surprised they're moving forward with some innovation and I guess the stock rise reflects that. OTOH yes, I'm pessimistic they'll actually accomplish something, but who knows? I don't know if the market will discount this soon.
- searine 9y agoBlockchain might be useful here, sure. Is that use worth 44% of their stock? Doubtful.
- Donald 9y agoYou're overestimating how much of Kodak is actually a viable business. Most of their revenue still comes out of their "Print Systems" (!) division. KODK's latest 10-K is filled with albatross risk statements like "The ability to generate positive operating cash flows will be necessary for Kodak to continue to operate its business."
- nrhk 9y agoHonestly if they nail this 44% is small potatoes, this is a dying company with little to no future revenue streams. I'm surprised it didn't go higher.
- analyst74 9y agocan't, nobody is lending out kodak shares to short sellers anymore.
- alvern 9y agoI don't get the value in the ICO. Photographer licenses image on KodakONE, receives KodakCOIN as payment. KodakONE uses blockchain to sell and protect the image from theft down the line. KodakONE uses lawyers to DMCA those who don't attribute or pay for the image.
- jhwang5 9y agoThe same problem can be solved if they just used Ethereum
- throwawayjava 9y agoThe same problem can be solved if they just used a bit of PHP in 1995. The killer feature is "lawyers armed with DMCA", not the crypto-themed CRUD app.
- jhwang5 9y agoAgreed. Essentially, a decentralized ledger does not give you the feature of "enforcing copyrights" for free, unless you have systems built outside of the ledger that does the enforcement. That piece can be built in the meat-world in the form of "an army of lawyers".
- throwawayjava 9y agoThe idea of creating a single online market-place that does the enforcement/rights management component in addition to storage/search/sale is interesting. But that's already a crowded marketplace, and it's not clear to me why Kodak announcing they're going to enter a crowded marketplace would push their stock. Especially given that the announcement is paired with an up-front admission that they're accruing lots of useless technical debt at the beginning of the project. I would be more inclined to invest in Kodak on the basis of this announcement if it didn't mention cryptocurrency at all.
- Twirrim 9y agoWhat value does the blockchain actually bring here? Why is this any different from existing methods of licensing images?
- alangibson 9y agoWe've hit Peak Coin.
- JackFr 9y agoYou're too late: http://www.peakcoin.io/ http://www.peakcoin.io/
- alangibson 9y ago"Peakcoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world." So there's a coin called Peakcoin. Real lack of awareness in the branding.
- bomb199 9y agoI'm really upset Peakcoin isn't a coin meant to quickly transfer money out of failing coin markets.
- ASalazarMX 9y agoUntil someone names their firstborn Block Chain, we're not there yet. Buroku chan is acceptable too.
- shp0ngle 9y agoYeah there is guy in Russia (well, Crimea) that named his son Bitcoin. We are there. https://finmedia.net/zhitel-simferopolya-nazval-sy-na-bitkoinom/ https://finmedia.net/zhitel-simferopolya-nazval-sy-na-bitkoi...
- trendia 9y ago"I knew I had made the right choice to stay out of cryptocurrencies when my taxi driver launched an ICO." -- Warren Buffet, sometime in the future
- kingmanaz 9y ago
- joeblau 9y agoWow. Attach some Blockchain jargon to your product and get valuation pop. This is getting slightly ridiculous.
- SkyMarshal 9y agoIndeed. https://twitter.com/FortWorth_SEC/status/950397035714371584 https://twitter.com/FortWorth_SEC/status/950397035714371584
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marblar 9y agoCan somebody explain the value-add of the blockchain portion of this vs just licensing the photo by uploading to a website?
- aviv 9y agoThe former makes your stock price double overnight.
- JshWright 9y agoAt the risk of a very low value comment... The fact that this wasn't called KODAKoin seems like a major oversight.
- djtriptych 9y agoToo easy to misinterpret as KODA Koin. Brand guidelines are important especially at a company like Kodak.
- braythwayt 9y agoThey've been there before, with great success: Kodachrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome
- tzahola 9y ago>especially at a company like Kodak. As they have barely anything left, I agree.
- jimmies 9y agoYes, I was thinking the same thing! Only difference is that you name it KodaKKoin to grab the ticker symbol KKK. It will become the latest and hottest meme on the block.
- leejo 9y agoSomething like this already exists: https://www.ascribe.io/ https://www.ascribe.io/ # I had to use it to submit some photos to a call for work a couple of years ago. After the call I wanted to delete the work, because I didn't want it hanging around in public view. Oh look! You can't! Because It's blockchain! Immutable history is not always a compelling requirement, in fact sometimes it is at odds with many a use case.
- pattisapu 9y ago> Immutable history is not always a compelling requirement, in fact sometimes it is at odds with many a use case. Good point. Perhaps the technology will account for this somehow, and thus be distinguishable in some way from other blockchain technologies . . . ?
- twanvl 9y agoWouldn't it be enough to submit a hash of the photo? Then sure, that hash is around forever in the blockchain, but without the original photo that hash is useless. It can only be used to prove that the photo existed at the time the hash was added, and with a digital signature, who added it.
- eat_veggies 9y agoYou could steal a photo by tweaking a single pixel or EXIF field, and suddenly it's an original image with no registered hash.
- drewm1980 9y agoYeah, any system like this has to deal with the analog hole somehow, and there really are no perfect solutions. Reminds me of the post the other day about a white noise video on Youtube getting a bunch of copyright infringement notices. You can take a signal out of the analog, but you can't take the analog out of a signal!
- Keres 9y agoYou can do a lot to mitigate that http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/?/archives/529-Kind-of-Like-That.html http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/?/archives/529-Kind-of-Like...
- elil17 9y ago>Get in on the ground floor To all those wondering where the value added is, there is none. If you want to know how they solve the oracle problem, they don’t. This is a pyramid scheme, they even use the marketing language word for word.
- velodrome 9y agoIs your stock down? Don't worry, create or invest in a cryptocoin and profit...It's cheaper than a stock buyback.
- Spivak 9y agoSomebody was really rushed to publish this. I mean good lord the site they link to https://www.kodakcoin.com/ https://www.kodakcoin.com/ still has lipsum and what I can only assume are placeholder photos. Unless Jan Denecke really is a man of many faces. Edit: Oh my god the background is an Adobe stock photo complete with watermark. Edit2: No, Kodak you don't get to just take the site down. The internet never forgets. https://imgur.com/a/LtI2s https://imgur.com/a/LtI2s
- steve_adams_86 9y agoHaha, you caught that moments before they replaced it with a "we'll be online within 24 hours' message.
- ganoushoreilly 9y agoSites rendering now with same stock photo : /
- arianvanp 9y agoAaaand it's down. that was quick
- will_brown 9y agoThe domain KODAKCoin.com was registered 7 days ago. Looks like someone jumped on the bandwagon and registered KODAKCo.in just today after the announcement.
- artmageddon 9y agoThey must have some incredible cloning technology - the CEO, the COO, and the CTO are all clones!!
- googletazer 9y agoThis is the real reason their stock is up.
- kbutler 9y ago
- korzun 9y agoWhy does every company need a coin now? Bitcoin is the standard.
- EdgarVerona 9y agoEasiest short opportunity of the year.
- jasonmaydie 9y agoPrepare for the blockchain gold rush
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- krisives 9y agoPart of me wants to call this Cryptowashing, but I don't know enough about modern photography. Is Kodak a brand that professionals use to shoot? Would they patent this "integration" so that others can't easily do it in various markets?
- rainbowmverse 9y agoKodak has more or less shifted to focus on printing and packaging. Building it into their printers would let photographers get credit when someone prints one of their photos (authorized or not).
- rainbowmverse 9y agoPossible use for this not well-served by existing systems: people looking to license photos in places or communities payment processors don't serve or don't serve well can potentially use this. The microstock sites have spent the last several years driving the value of an image down to the point where you're lucky to get 25 cents (only because it's currently the guaranteed minimum), so it's already in reach of places with low cost of living. Those are the same places where buying stock from people based in already heavily-developed places is complicated by transaction fees and anti-fraud measures.
- king07828 9y agoIf the cycle is: 1 photographer uploads photo; 2 photo consumer (e.g., magazine) pays USD to Kodak for photo usage; 3 Kodak pays KodakCoin to photographer; Then it looks like a cash grab and the chances of success may be limited because there is no demand driving the price of KodakCoin. If the cycle is: 1 photographer uploads photo; 2a photo consumer buys KodakCoins from exchange; 2b photo consumer pays KodakCoins to Kodak for photo usage; 3 Kodak pays KodakCoin to photographer. Then it may be viable because requiring the consumer to purchase coin creates demand for the coin.
- artursapek 9y agoOh for fuck's sake
- goodroot 9y agoI know HN isn't too spiced up about Crypto, but it's important to realize that lots of these "cryptocurrencies" are built atop Ethereum -- that's part of what makes it magical. This is leveraging Ethereum, to create a currency, to address a market need: photographers getting appropriate renumeration and accreditation for their work. Picture this: you snap a photo, its hash is on a decentralized public record. If someone uses this photo, you're aware of it and can be rewarded/credited appropriately. We can scoff at the blockchain-ization of all these applications, or realize that they really do have far-reaching implications. Whether the investors are patient enough to wait for the benefit to become actualized, though, is a whole 'nother matter.
- runeks 9y ago> Picture this: you snap a photo, its hash is on a decentralized public record. If someone uses this photo, you're aware of it and can be rewarded/credited appropriately. Except if that someone changes a single bit in the photo data (which will result in a completely different hash).
- lightbyte 9y agoThat won't stop you from visually identifying that they are the same, then just looking at the block-chain to see which hash was published first (and thus the real photo).
- fl0wenol 9y agoUnless there's a parallel repository of all the images in a form that's easy to search (some kind of sparse, feature-rich form that's quick CV-match friendly), which isn't the hash, you're going to have a hard time with that initial assessment and enforcement of potential infringers. That right there could be a pretty expensive system to maintain and it isn't ideal to distributed across a bunch of blockchain participants, it probably has to live in a Kodak server farm somewhere.
- runeks 9y agoBut who will determine whether two different images are visually the same? What’s the point of a decentralized system if a trusted third party decides which images are visually equivalent? Just use that third party to register the image with in the first place, rather than in a blockchain, since that party gets to invalidate your image-hash in the chain anyway (in case your image is deemed visually equivalent to an image earlier in the chain).
- stusmall 9y agoI'm just waiting to buy some pets.com coin
- weej 9y agoHave ICOs 'jumped the shark'? Definitely starting to feel that way with solution(s) looking for problems that don't need this complexity, reinvention of the wheel, not invented here, or hype train (FOMO).
- Delmania 9y agoI jokingly told my father-in-law he can get his full retirement now (he retired from Kodak as over 3 decades). I don't think I'll ever look at the Kodak tower again... The only benefit Kodak has done for it's hometown is foster a entrepreneur hub in Rochester as all the people who once worked for them left to form their own companies.
- alistproducer2 9y agoOne need only take a look at Kodak's sales in the last decade to see why this is happening. Just like we got Long Blockchain as a ploy to keep the company stock from being delisted,I'm sure we'll be seeing many more companies that are circling the drain looking to blockchain as a hail mary. This doesn't mean that there aren't legit use cases for the tech, but we're gonna be seeing a lot of shoe horning into blockchain in the coming years by failing companies.
- astaroth360 9y agoJust waiting for this insane cryptocurrency bubble to pop hard. Riches are being made, but a ton of people are going to end up broke and broken, and the bigger the bubble grows the worse the popping will be.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoCome on guys, this is really the sign of cryptocurrencies about to crash. "When the paper boy on the street corner is giving stock advice, that's when you sell."
- faramarz 9y agoIs this a landing page that was put together last minute? It seems like it. Look a the teams page, the same two people are the placeholder image for every team member. How serious is Kodak about this really? https://www.kodakcoin.com https://www.kodakcoin.com
- pdelbarba 9y agoCrazy theory, but their stock very steadily this year and a lot of retail investors probably had short positions that they've been holding as a result. Lets say they threw this whole thing together betting that it would cause a bump in value. I'd bet the stair step on the price chart was a cascade of margin calls against all the short sellers because all the brokerages were forced to buy the stock to cover, further raising the price.
- faramarz 9y agohmm it would be an insane reputation risk for the private equity firm behind Kodak, but still very plausible.
- have_faith 9y agoI'm sure no one will figure out how to claim other peoples photos on the blockchain..
- hodder 9y agoIt is blindingly obvious we are in a bubble. I find it crazy that everyone cannot see it.
- gshakir 9y agoAny one remember 'e-company' phase in 1999? Looks like it is all over again. This will lead to speculation in stocks and we all know how that ends.
- mgiannopoulos 9y ago> WENN Digital, in partnership with Kodak, is the creator of the KODAKOne platform and the KODAKCoin cryptocurrency. WENN Digital is an experienced development and operations team with deep expertise in proprietary blockchain development, big data, copyright law, AI-enabled image recognition and post licensing monetization systems. WENN Digital has a strategic relationship with the Deloitte Analytics Institute in Berlin and the Deloitte Blockchain Institute in Munich. < Kodak is basically licensing their brand to a company that using another company's technology. Sounds like a safe bet /s