The Malta Blockchain Summit opened its doors at the Intercontinental this morning, welcoming back thousands of blockchain professionals and enthusiasts from around the world. After an evening of VIP dinners, networking and all sorts of activity around Paceville, delegates were eager to continue their experience here at the summit.
This morning’s “Is your business blockchainable” panel was packed to the brim, leaving the audience with the unanimous answer of yes, just about every business can and should utilize the blockchain.
Speaker Dr. Mihaela Ulieru, or “Dr. M” of Endor has been involved with Blockchain since the beginning and is a big believer in the technology. She has extensive knowledge in the intersection of AI and blockchain from her time at MIT and also spoke on the intersection of advertising and blockchain.
“[Advertising and blockchain] work together lovely but to the benefit of the individual. And of course to the detriment of the centralized Google and Facebook who are actually absorbing all the income from the brands and not delivering actually to the customer because the wrong advertisement goes to the wrong customer”, Dr. M shared with CoinGeek.com
“With Blockchain, you can have a direct linkage to your customer and incentivize them through tokens, through Bitcoins if you want, or any kind of tokens you design in order to look at your brand, only if they want, obviously”, she explained.
“If they look at the brand and the offers, you can offer them directly and not pay Google, but from that amount of money you can take a portion and do a discount for that person who really is interested in your product. So it is really, really unleashing a lot of energy, a lot of money, a lot of value. The nature of value comes back to its true origins”, Dr. M added.
While Malta is now in the process of establishing itself as “Blockchain Island” by becoming a hub for blockchain businesses, Malta has maintained its position as a popular online gambling industry jurisdiction. There is a natural crossover between the blockchain and iGaming industries, creating a perfect storm here in Malta.
Local service providers such as E&S Group whose areas of expertise include both blockchain and iGaming have found themselves in an ideal position on the island.
“I think blockchain is usable for everyone in the world and including gaming”, shared Dr. Christian Ellul, Director of E&S Group.
“But gaming tends to lend itself a lot to blockchain so we have certain ICOs that are funding, for example, a gaming company. We have other gaming companies that want to start using crypto currencies and there’s basically a sandbox allocation rules in by the MGA now, so they really do link in well”, he said.
E&S group hosted one of the expo’s most entertaining booths, complete with a top-of-the-line cocktail bar and photo booth complete with blockchain-themed paraphernalia.
“We try to have a fun environment, not the boring law firm set up. So we have a thirsty bar which is a local, very famous sort of bar, so the cocktails are coming through and everybody’s going for that”, Dr. Ellul told CoinGeek.com
“We have this special machine that takes photos, prints them out with funny Bitcoin signs and all that stuff and its been a hit, people keep coming and coming and taking photos, seeing what we do and having a drink, so it’s a good environment”, he confirmed.
Looking around the Malta Blockchain Summit expo, its clear the Blockchain industry is young, excited and thriving, a perfect market for stylish crypto swag. Or at least Leo Leiman of BadChain, seems to think that is the case.
After attending dozens of blockchain-themed events over the past year since his crypto-branded clothing company was launched, Leiman enjoyed his time at the Malta Gaming Summit because of the quality of the attendees and their dedication to investing in and growing the industry.
“You have to find some clothing to wear, you have to be stylish here because a lot of guys in the industry are smart and I think that they could be stylish also. This was how our idea was born and I decided to do all the merch, this idea I decided to do it one year ago and I created a blockchain system for clothing also just for fun”, Leiman told CoinGeek.com.
“I can make T-shirts for you, coats, raincoats, T-shirts with crypto, rings with crypto, with Ethereum, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, as you wish…I have huge experience in this field and I know how to make the young generation more happy. It’s a really stylish industry, it is young, fresh”, he added.
As the Malta Blockchain Summit came to a close, we caught up with the “conference organizing guru” himself, Eman Pulis, who puts in an enormous amount of time and effort to pull of an event of this caliber.
“First show, baptism of fire, 8500 people. I couldn’t be happier than this”, Pulis shared with CoinGeek.com
“There is so much buzz happening in Malta on the blockchain front, but the government has made it so easy for us to build this show here and the buzz is real, so there’s people coming in not just from Europe, but there was a heavy presence from North America, from Asia, Latin America and everyone’s just doing great business”, he said.
“We’ve had some great speakers, some colorful ones like John McAfee, a bit controversial which doesn’t hurt the show, we had the founder of Cardano, we had the very first professor who wrote the very first paper on blockchain, professor Scott Stornetta, so the content was very very rich”, Pulis added.
“But besides the content, I think what I’ve learned from SiGMA, is that a floor plan needs to be buzzing. You need to create the right atmosphere for people to relax and start trusting each other to do business and I think that’s what we did unlike many other blockchain shows”, he said.
Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.
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The inaugural Malta Blockchain Summit (MBS) kicked off with a BANG today at the Intercontinental hotel, an event attracting thousands of blockchain professionals from around the world. MBS created a buzz so big that all the hotels in the area are completely sold out and delegates are literally spilling into the Intercontinental lobby, outside on the street and all around the St. Julian’s area.
While the main purpose of this event is to raise awareness of Malta as a blockchain-friendly jurisdiction, the summit has also succeeded in attracting experts from Malta and beyond to talk on all things blockchain.
Malta native Angelo Dali, famous for his work in artificial intelligence (AI), iGaming and now blockchain, emerged for the first time as the CEO of Umnai, a company building ethical AI solutions. Just last night, Dali assisted in the sale of an AI-constructed painting at the Malta Blockchain Summit Awards for a whopping 17,500 Euros. Dali shared with CoinGeek.com how his world of AI and blockchain overlap, creating an exciting intersection of two ground-breaking technologies.
“AI and blockchain obviously have some applications together, for example in the art world, what we’re going to do is to put the artwork itself on the blockchain and make sure that we have a certificate of authenticity of the art”, explained Dali.
“For example, this artwork has been sold for 17,500 in Malta on 31st October. You can actually go online and anyone can check, this is the real price of this artwork and you can follow its history using the blockchain”, he said.
“And I think this will revolutionize also the way that auctions are done, the way that pricing is done, to bring transparency into the art world”, Dali added.
Today’s “government vs. blockchain” session featured Matthias Klees of Europe Coin, the company behind the “Finance Cloud” API. The Finance Cloud is a user device and a protocol that can be plugged into the home network as a smarthub into a cloud of financial services. The device connects the “internet of coins” with the internet of things and services, essentially connecting one blockchain to another and simplifying the entire process for all users of the system.
Klees is also an expert in European Union policies (and the politics behind them) and shared his opinion on how the EU views blockchain technology at present.
“You have to divide the European union into two parties because there is the government itself and there’s the central bank and they are in completely opposite opinions about this whole thing”, Klees explained.
“This makes the government often react, especially in terms of regulation, which I critique very much, react in an unpredictable and unclear way because they are afraid to say something wrong, which the central bank doesn’t like. They are much more open to crypto currencies than they can say”, he shared.
In addition to its limitless use cases and capabilities, Blockchain technology is brilliant because of its potential to open up the world to so many people, especially those who are based in developing countries and the underbanked. For example, the Founders of Reitum, a global equity crowd funding portal and secondary trading exchange, have developed a blockchain-based platform that simplifies real estate investment for all.
“So we allow people to compliantly invest in real estate for as little as 100 dollars, earn rental income on a monthly basis and sell their portion back to the global market in a compliant way in under a minute”, Michael Moll of Reitum exclusively shared with CoinGeek.com.
In terms of the role blockchain plays in this project, Moll explained how Reitum utilizes three ledgers:
“We use the blockchain to have a global property ledger, of all the properties, all the documents, that align with that. We have a ledger of all the investors, their accreditation, their identities and their anti-money laundering for processed money and the final thing is a register of all the shares, we call them security tokens, and all their ownerships and all the rights relate to that”, Moll explained.
“So those three things interplay in a way that we can actually reduce the cost of real estate investing by 90% by opening up the market to the next two billion people who are dying to get in and unlock a trillion dollars of sleeping capitol”, he said.
“This is seniors, millennials, people in developing world with 100 dollars, 5,000 dollars saved up, buying avocado toast, going on holiday because they don’t think they can get assets. Our platform is perfect for them and we’re so excited to be launching in about a month”, he added.
Everyone attending the Malta Blockchain Summit expresses excitement in the concept of “Blockchain Island” and commends the Maltese government for their open minds and forward thinking. Malta-based Genesis Mining believes businesses in the blockchain space need certainty from the regulator and this is exactly what Malta is now able to offer.
“I think its remarkable to see Malta really stepping forward in a very progressive way. They want to make this the “Blockchain Island” and they are putting a lot of incentive and efforts into the regulatory framework to basically give the companies that are coming here more regulatory certainty which is an essential driver for that”, Genesis Mining CEO Marco Streng told CoinGeek.com.
“I think this is great and I think its also a great example for other countries and we will probably have other countries to follow that and that’s a whole new push on a global scale”, he added.
Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.
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