Malta AI and Blockchain Summit Spring Addition 2019: Day 1 recap

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The Malta AI and Blockchain Summit Spring Addition opened its doors today at the Hilton, a gorgeous venue in a lovely sunny location. This event has attracted thousands of delegates from around the world who are all interested in learning more about AI and blockchain, two technologies currently disrupting our world.

The Hilton was absolutely packed today with over 5000 delegates who enjoyed booths and networking areas spanning across three floors, including a number of sessions & workshops throughout the day.

“First of all we love Malta, it’s a great venue”, speaker David Shoham Sachs of Tomobox shared with CoinGeek.com.

“The other thing we found out, there’s a real synergy between blockchain and artificial intelligence, a lot of people from both sides are looking into that technology. In gaming, Blockchain can be used for payments, artificial intelligence can be used for analytics, prediction, prescriptions of actions and just profiling of players”, he added.

Straight off the bat today delegates noticed a shift from 2018’s pure hype to actually putting blockchain technology into practice, including Angleo Dalli of Umnai, one of the event’s key speakers.

“I think [blockchain] has become much more practical as an industry, we’ve seen less hype and more practical projects becoming here. I’ve just finished judging the pitches and it is really, really cool actually to see projects that are more and more practical instead of just addressing something that is very theoretical”, he said.

“I think that the crypto space and the blockchain space is becoming more accessible for everyone, rather than just geeks”, he added with a smile.

Following a number of recent incidents in the crypto industry, such as unwarranted delistings of crypto currencies from exchanges and other exchange related scandals, the call for regulation was an important topic of discussion. Ian Gauci, advisor to the Government of Malta on blockchain, explained why regulation is important on the island.    

“The first services or derivatives arising out of blockchain were crypto currencies and these ICOs. There we saw a very high failure rate, high fraud, high security incidences because of exchanges”, Gauci shared with CoinGeek.com.

“So there is a consumer problem which we have to adjust. Why? Because the backlash would be that the consumer would not take services originating from blockchain, so the investor will not invest in blockchain, so there we are literally sidestepping a fantastic technology. So that is why we created legislation. That is why we are fostering consumer protection”, he said.

Jonathan Galea of Blockchain Advisory Ltd shares a similar point of view and explained how Malta has started regulating the centralized service providers, such as exchanges.

“Like every other service out there, there is the end user, there is the consumer. And therefore there needs to be protection for the consumer plus legal certainty for those operating in this sphere”, Galea said.

“And as you may know, the certainty has been a bit lacking in this space up until now. So Malta is of course seeking to rectify that and therefore has launched this framework to provide precisely that”, he added.

“With regards to the technical part, we are not looking to regulate the technical infrastructures. What we’re doing is we’re providing certain technical standards which of course those looking to use this technology can refer to such standards and obtain certification that they are compliant with such technical standards”, Galea explained.

Brock Pierce, a familiar face in both the gaming and blockchain industries, proved to be incredibly popular today as he walked through the expo floor. In between entertaining selfies and meet ‘n greets with his fans, CoinGeek.com caught up with blockchain evangelist Pierce, during which he provided advice on how consumers can avoid losing their money by investing in scam coins and chains.

“First of all, don’t chase the get rich quick scheme. Don’t become a victim of what’s called FOMO or ‘fear of missing out’. And don’t do anything anyone else tells you to do. Make every decision for yourself. As long as you take the time to be informed, to educate yourself and to make decisions for yourself as a sovereign being, you’re never going to get ripped off”, he advised.

Pierce commented on a number of other issues surrounding our industry today such as the Tether scandal, the United States Copywright Office’s recognition of Dr. Craig Wright as the author of the Bitcoin Whitepaper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Puerto Rico as a hub for blockchain and the crossover between iGaming and crypto, to be released shortly as an exclusive CoinGeek.com Coinversation.

Back on the conference floor, “Decentralised” and “Bitcoin” are two terms that often appear hand in hand, yet the true nature of decentralization can be defined in several ways. During Oliver Prock’s presentation today, he made the point to explain why the popular notion that everything can be decentralized simply doesn’t make sense.

“I think this space wants to make everybody believe that its possible, but its not possible. Me as a professional, I cannot exchange custody of something that wants to be decentralized to a person that is not regulated. That doesn’t make sense. It simply doesn’t work for me”, he said.

“For example, decentralized real estate, that’s a use case I can understand- fractionalized, basically selling the real estate in small shares – great idea, but someone needs to hold that real estate and I need that trusted person so it can’t be trustless. So the space needs to understand that this trustless does not work for everyone and for everything”, he added.

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.