At the risk of sounding out-of-touch, I remember the first dotcom bubble bursting back in 2001. The preceding years were marked by older, traditional businesses bolstering their share prices with digital initiatives with the names prefixed with an 'e-'. Some companies even rebranded themselves - inserting a '.com' at the end of an already established brand name. These changes denoted a traditional company that had woken up and smelt the coffee and was now somehow 'digitally aware'. Often the result was just a website - and in the most advanced cases it might have some capacity for people to interact, or even transact with it. Often these initiatives were rewarded with a significant increase in share price.
Events that followed yesterday's announcement of KodakCoin are very reminiscent of these times, with Eastman Kodak's share price jumping by 120% in a day. KodakCoin does sound like a very interesting initiative and I wish Kodak all the best with it.
In some respects, the thing that surprised me most about this news was that the fact that after more than doubling in value in a day Eastman Kodak's market cap stood at $390m. A reminder, if any was needed, of the massive price companies pay for not investing sufficiently in digital transformation.....
Shares in photo firm Eastman Kodak soared nearly 120% after it revealed plans to mint its own crypto-currency, the KodakCoin. The US firm said it was teaming up with London-based Wenn Media Group to carry out the initial coin offering (ICO). It is part of a blockchain-based initiative to help photographers control their image rights.