Today was Day 1 of the Malta Blockchain Summit. There are definitely a lot of people at this conference. If there is a bear market in Crypto, someone forget to tell the attendees! Literally thousands showed up to attend.
I did a little video back at my hotel room recapping my thoughts of the day.
Main takeaway
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has definitely not been shy in touting Malta as the ‘Blockchain Island’ however I would refine that claim a bit.
Perhaps I’m crypto ‘old skool’ however when I think of a ‘Blockchain Island’, I think of a utopian place of decentralisation, where people own their own money. I think of peer-to-peer transactions. Of people buying their coffee with Bitcoin and less conspicuous stuff with Monero. That kind of thing.
I think I can confidently say Malta is not going to be that kind of Blockchain Island!
Rather Malta will be more of a Blockchain Services Island. If you need services in relation to blockchain, be it legal services, marketing, business development or a crypto friendly regulatory framework then Malta is positioning itself to be the place to come.
Overall I think it’s a win-win for crypto and Malta, however as John McAfee pointed out in a brief cameo on the Main Stage, the trustless, permissionless train that is cryptocurrency and blockchain will carry on unabated, regardless of more gentrified strains of the technology.
Hors d'oeuvres
ICO hunting
My search for a diamond in the rough of ICOs, STOs, UTOs… UFOs… continues. I didn’t find anything to tempt me today however I did get into a couple of interesting conversations around consensus algorithms.
The first was with a guy from a new “decentralised anonymous smart contract platform” called Quras that will apparently use the Proof of Importance protocol used by NEM as it’s consensus algorithm… it will also leverage Monero/ CryptoNote technology for anonymous transactions… oh wait and and Cash tech for anonymous storage…. Oh did I mention… DAG win the future. Needless to see I wait for when the product is brought to market before looking at that one.
The second was Felta, that introduces an algorithm I’d never heard of before called Proof-of-Formulation. It sounds a bit like DPOS however rather than having Stake weighted voting elect Witnesses/ Block Producers, Nodes would need to lock up a certain amount of collateral a la Masternodes to qualify. An interesting concept however I’ll wait to see how this performs in the ‘wild’ before seeing whether it merits further investigation.
Steemian search
I did manage to bump into a couple of "Steemians" at the Conference.
The first was @chris4210, founder of Payger. I seem to run into Chris at every Conference I go to! He is definitely on his grind!
I also met @daveonarrival who was rocking a DTube t-shirt and everything. He had that shocked look you get when a big black dude you don't know from adam pulls up to you in the men's toilet and asks 'Do I know you from somewhere!' Lmao.
Definitely representing to the fullest!
PM's am appointment
Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat kicked things off early, this guy is definitely crypto bullish!
Spitting knowledge
John Mcafee, flanked by heavies, whiskey in hand... telling it how it is!
After party anyone?
Nah, 'drinks' at the Tapas bar overspilled into the street. The place was heaving! Time for me to retire to my room... pipe and slippers style!