BBC Exposes Dubious Bitcoin Mining Rig
Spotlite USA is a brand license issuer for Kodak LED lighting products, which lets the company put the latter company’s brand on its own products.
In January 2018 at the CES held in Las Vegas, the firm featured a cryptocurrency mining computer which was up for rent. The company’s plan was to offer the computer to its clients to pay an upfront fee to rent the computer. The product promised customers even while they paid the $3,400 renting fee, they could also make a substantial profit out of cryptocurrency mining.
However, BBC reported that the company never had the licensing to use Kodak’s brand for the mining rig and that the appraised profit for cryptocurrency miners was improbable considering Bitcoin’s ever- increasing mining difficulty and cost. The advertising material guaranteed remunerations of $375 a month for two years, which would add up to a total of $9,000 at the end of the stipulated period and deliver a payout of $5,600 for Bitcoin miners.
Saifedean Ammous, an economics professor and author of ‘The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking’ stated that any miner that used KashMiner would only lose money rather than make any.
“There is no way your magical Kodak miner will make the same $375 every month,” Ammous stated.
Halston Mikail, CEO of the company, previously announced that he intended to install hundreds of KashMiners at Kodak’s headquarters and had stated that 80 devices were already installed there. The claim was later negated by Kodak’s spokesperson, who revealed that no devices had ever been installed.
“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.”
According to BBC, Spotlite’s CEO claimed that Kodak didn’t go through with the deal due to interference from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), prompting the company to back down on its business plan.
Instead of offering KashMiners for miners to rent, Spotlite USA plans on establishing its mining operation in Iceland, where it already has a few mining rigs. It is yet unknown if Spotlite USA was trying to rip off cryptocurrency miners, but evidence point towards calculation errors and deceit.