The company behind a Kodak-branded crypto-currency mining rig, which was shown to the press at CES and seen as a scam by critics, has dissolved
The company behind a Kodak-branded crypto-currency mining scheme has confirmed the plan has collapsed. — In January, a Bitcoin mining computer …
Context & Ripple Effects
In January 2018, Kodak's blockchain announcements briefly made it a market story again: the KODAKCoin launch news sent its stock up as much as 300%, and the CES-unveiled KashMiner rig promised buyers a share of Bitcoin mined on Kodak-branded hardware. Critics called the scheme a scam from the start, and one analysis framed Kodak itself as a shell of a bankrupt company worth $135M before the blockchain pivot.
A [[a:926260|KodakCoin co-creator argued weeks later that market reaction was drowning out the photography-rights use case]] as the ICO went live. Six months on, the company behind the mining rig has dissolved and confirmed the plan collapsed — the hardware leg of Kodak's crypto strategy is dead while the token side remains unproven.
First-order effects
- Anyone who signed up to rent or buy KashMiner machines loses their mining arrangement with no operating company left behind it.
- Kodak's brand-licensing crypto strategy loses its CES showcase, leaving KODAKCoin as the sole surviving piece of the January announcements.
Second-order effects
- The collapse hands ammunition to skeptics of legacy-brand crypto licensing generally, raising the bar of proof for any future Kodak-branded token or hardware venture.
- Rig makers and licensors watching the KashMiner failure face the same economics that later pushed miners like Bitmain to see its Hong Kong IPO application lapse and drove GPU miners to shut off rigs once mining turned unprofitable.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, crypto ventures attached to distressed consumer brands prove to be price-of-coin bets rather than businesses — they launch on announcement spikes and dissolve when mining margins or token demand fail, echoing how even at scale, operators like Core Scientific wound down rigs for bankrupt clients like Celsius.
The trend: Legacy-brand crypto licensing ventures are proving to be leveraged bets on coin prices, launching on announcement spikes and collapsing when mining economics turn.