A Brief History of Kodak and the 'rise' of the KodakCOIN

Kodak is still is a staple name in the photography industry. Founded back in 1888, by George Eastman and Henry Strong, from the 1900s onward, Kodak used to have a dominant grip on the film market. However, despite their monolithic success in film and film cameras, they began to struggle financially, to the point of filing for bankruptcy protection in January of 2012. Here we explore a brief history of this company, and where it is going with "KodakCOIN" : their own cryptocurrency.

In 1975, 24 year old Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the world’s first digital camera (at 0.01mp) while experimenting with early CCDs: Charged Coupled Devices. The device was simple: a super 8 lens aligned to a CCD that fed electric signals that were then digitized, stored in RAM, and written as magnetic data onto nothing other than a cassette tape.

Sasson would show the cassette-camera to executives, who just couldn’t get excited about it. The technology was in its infancy, and after all when print was so cheap and so dominated by Kodak in every process-- from the film itself, to the developing machines, to the printing -- they never fully pursed it until at least a decade later.

Sasson continued to work on digital photography while he was at Kodak, where he helped develop memory-card compression techniques, along with an early 1.2 mp digital camera that used a memory card-- but Kodak wouldn’t bite on consumer models. Along the way, Kodak patented all of this work, helping them make billions in licensing as other companies began using the technology to make their own digital cameras.

Because Kodak was so far behind in the digital market, other competitors (such as Nikon, & Canon) took over the consumer digital camera market, with Kodak models having far less advanced technology due to their lack of focus.

All of this eventually led to the company filing for bankruptcy in 2012, thankfully recovering in 2013 (mostly due to patent sells), and finally turning a small profit in 2015.

KodakCOIN and KodakONE

Recently in a press statement, Kodak states that unlike when they missed the boom with digital cameras, despite inventing them, Kodak will not miss the boom in cryptocurrency. Their plan: release the KodakCOIN, a Kodak Cryptocurrency that will be used to create: KodakONE: a digital marketplace for photographers to sell their work in exchange for KodakCOINs. Not only that, but they had also claimed that they would begin mining various cryptocurrencies...all from one of the leading industries in film development.

The ICO (Initial Coin Offering) was announced to occur in early January 2018, but due to a series of changes in SEC laws pertaining to ICOs, the initial offering was delayed, and restricted to high earners.

The general public ICO still hasn’t happened (October 2018), and an everyday consumer cannot buy KodakCOIN.

So what does this mean? Could Kodak pull off an ICO? Did the SEC put a complete halt to their plan? Only time will tell.

--article by: Oliver Austin