Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been exploding in recent months. Bitcoin’s price soared to over $20,000 in December, while other alt-coins rose in price and pushed the global cryptocurrency market cap over $750 billion.

I had a draft post in the hopper for Photography Bay a week and a half ago titled “How Blockchain Technology Could Affect Photography.” I have been digging into cryptocurrency and blockchain for a while now and was thinking forward about a licensing and ownership tracking method for photographs, along with a payment method for photographers. (There are over 1,000 crytpocurrencies in existence today across a wide range of industries and use cases.) Here sits the post in my trash file from when I put it there 9 days ago:

I kept hacking at the posted and ended up trashing it because I thought I was reaching too far and maybe it wasn’t all that relevant as a concept. As it turns out, Kodak was way ahead of me and I would’ve looked like a Nostradamus had I published that post a few days ago.

Kodak is officially moving into the crypto market with today’s announcement of the KODAKCoin, which is “a photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management.” [Read more…]