Malta Blockchain Summit 2018 day 2 recap

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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.