Kodak Miner ‘Scam’ Is Gone

A Bitcoin mining computer labelled Kodak KashMiner was on display on Kodak’s official stand at the CES technology show in Las Vegas in January. However, the company behind it now says it will not go ahead and Kodak told BBC it was never licensed by them to begin with.

In a phone call with the BBC, Spotlite USA, a company behind Kodak KashMiner, CEO Halston Mikail said the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had prevented the scheme from going ahead. Instead of renting, they now intend to run their operations privately somewhere in Iceland.

A Kodak spokesperson emphasizes that, “While you saw units at CES from our licensee Spotlite, the KashMiner is not a Kodak brand licensed product. Units were not installed at our headquarters.”

Companies can license the Kodak brand to put it on their own product, an action that is not unheard of in the case of many big-name brands. Spotlite USA is one of them, and it showed off a Bitcoin-mining computer labelled Kodak KashMiner in January and told the BBC that it planned to let people rent the machines.

They intended to let people pay an upfront fee of USD 3,400 to rent the KashMiner and keep a cut of any mined coins. Its chief executive Halston Mikail detailed plans to install hundreds of the devices at the Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York, to take advantage of cheap electricity offered by an on-site power plant.

However, critics had labeled it a scam, saying that the advertised profits were “unachievable and misleading.” Spotlite promised monthly earnings of USD 375 for two years – where the upfront fee would be quickly paid off – but critics said that they did not take into account that Bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly difficult.