KodakCoin’s Co-Creator Has Big Crypto Regrets

One of KodakCoin’s co-creators is expressing regrets over the market reaction to the cryptocurrency.

According to The Washington Post, Kodak announced earlier this month that it was launching its own cryptocurrency, KodakCoin, which led to the company’s share price nearly quadrupling by the end of the next day.

While most would be thrilled with this turn of events, Cameron Chell, the entrepreneur and lead consultant on the KodakCoin project, said he regrets what has taken place since the announcement.

“It … caught everybody by surprise, internally,” said Chell. “It’s been a terrible distraction, and I really wish it didn’t happen.”

One of his biggest complaints is that the stock attention diverted from the most important issue: how the cryptocurrency works and what it can offer those who use it.

In fact, analysts agree that KodakCoin’s accompanying platform, KodakOne, could be a game-changer for professional photographers, who can use it to sell their work, as well as to track who has licensed their photos and how.

“Having a clear chain of custody of digital rights to an image that includes who took it, who bought it and with which rights, etc., has been a longstanding problem for professional photographers,” Stephan Goss, chief executive of the data monetization company Zeeto, wrote in a recent op-ed for Fortune. “And it just happens to be a problem that can be very elegantly solved on the blockchain.”

Chell said that the first KodakCoins will be auctioned off today in an initial coin offering, but only accredited investors can participate right now. The blockchain register for images is expected to launch in the second quarter.

And there are plans to expand the platform to work for other industries.

“There’s been an overwhelming response from not just the imaging industry,” said Chell, “but the music industry, the film industry, the virtual reality space, basically almost anything digital that you can think of where, ‘Hey wow, rights management can be restored here.’ We’re certainly going to look at all that stuff – but we’re very much focused on images first.”