The Delta Summit event in Malta occurred between 3^rd October and 5^th October 2018. This event celebrated Malta’s involvement and willingness to embrace Blockchain technologies whilst allowing a large number of international attendees, investors and guest speakers to attend. This three-day event will become an annual event in the island of Malta, which has been dubbed as the Blockchain Island.

To view my review on Day 1 of the Delta Summit, click here.

 

Day 2 of the Delta Summit kicked off at 9:30 am but registration was open from 8:00 am. Registration was far quicker than on the previous day since the bulk of registrations had already been done.  Most attendees headed to the Main stage where an opening address was given by Theo Priestley, Technology Evangelist, Digital Raconteur, Advisor, and Keynote Speaker. (Theo Priestley)

 

An official message was given remotely by Dr. Roberto Viola who is the Director General of DG CONNECT Directorate General of Communication, Networks, Content, and Technology, European Commission. Dr. Roberto Viola called this era to be exciting times and sees Europe as embracing this new technology, Blockchain and using it to its full potential.

 

Dr. Abdalla Kablan, an Entrepreneur and Fintech expert who is also the organizer of the event, introduced the event and informed attendees that this will be an annual event in Malta. The name Delta Summit came from the mathematical meaning of the word delta; change.

 

The next keynote was presented by Dr. Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister of Malta. Dr. Muscat highlighted the fact that Malta was not only the first to introduce regulations for the Blockchain technology but is also the best. He continued to state that quality is far more important to being first but luckily, Malta is both. Malta is aiming to not only be at the forefront of Europe but at the forefront of the entire world. Malta is truly the Blockchain Island.

 

Hon. Silvio Schembri, the Junior Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister of Malta has been an active member within the Blockchain community. He presented the next keynote and recalled the day that the Prime Minister called him with news of Blockchain and the potential it could have for Malta.

 

An interesting keynote was presented by Stephen McCarthy, the CEO of Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA). Mr. McCarthy discussed the new regulation and the role of the technical officer. The complexity with coming up with new regulations for a technology which had not previously been regulated is that there is nothing to refer to. The Technical Administrator should be able to demonstrate to the MDIA that it satisfies certain specific criteria such as it satisfying the prerequisites, that it sticks to the standards on a continuous basis and that it will allow the Technical Administrator to intervene if needed. Mr. McCarthy emphasized that the role is not just simply following a checklist and there is a lot more work involved.

 

Talks

Josh O’Cock, the Director of Growth Gurus, introduced a set of keynotes entitled Inspiring Stories. Growth Gurus is a company which helps businesses grow and claim to differentiate from other Digital Marketing Agencies. Josh O’Cock humored the audience and acted as the moderator for the rest of the keynotes in the block. (We are not just a digital marketing agency)

 

Calvin Cheng gave the keynote titled, The future of crypto finance in the start-up ecosystem. Calvin Cheng is the co-founder and CEO of ABCC Crypto Exchange. ABCC Crypto Exchange allows for exchanges of cryptocurrencies without charging any fees. (abcc) Mr. Cheng’s keynote spoke about non-dilutive tokens which are capital which does not require the company to give up any of its business shares. (Shane, 2015)

 

The next keynote was addressed by Dr. Hermann Hauser, the co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited, founder of Acorn computers, and ARM Holdings. Dr. Hauser has truly impacted the IT industry, in particular in relation to the ARMs microchips found in our mobile phone devices. Dr. Hauser’s keynote was titled, Blockchain: The disruption in finance. In his talk, Dr. Hauser discussed the life-changing technologies; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Synthetic Biology, and Quantum Computing. It is expected that these technologies will change our lives dramatically within the next five to ten years.

Early in his career, Dr. Hauser realized that there were six waves of computing. It started with Mainframe computers from IBM, Minicomputers from DEC, Workstations from SUN, Personal computers from INTEL and Microsoft, Smartphones from ARM, Google, and Apple. Internet of Things (IoT) raises a question mark to who will claim the lead in this sector. Dr. Hauser then rhetorically asks the audience who would have suspected that Intel and Microsoft, being big players in the Personal Computer sector, would have no significant impact on the smartphone industry.

With every new wave, the main dominators of the technology differentiate from the previous waves. For this reason, it is unpredictable who will dominate IoT. Having said that, he also added that 90% of IoT devices are using ARMs. Thus, it might be one of the first companies to greatly contribute to the IoT wave. Dr. Hauser has a very interesting background, experience and life story that we will definitely require an article dedicated solely to him in the future.

 

As part of the Inspiring Stories block, Sanja Kon presented a keynote titled, The future of cryptocurrency payments. Ms. Kon is the Head of Partnerships at UTRUST. Sanja Kon has an interesting background. She comes from PayPal and eBay and managed strategic business partnerships in Europe. In her keynote, Ms. Kon discussed the roadblocks which cryptocurrency payments face before being fully adopted into our everyday life; maturity, volatility, hold (people hold on to cryptocurrencies in case the value rises), speed and regulation. (Crypto payments platform UTRUST taps former PayPal and eBay executive Sanja Kon, as VP of Global Partnerships, 2018)

Ms. Kon encourages the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the case of transactions, claiming merchants would experience a savings of 3-5% on each transaction and would face no chargeback. Although there seems to be a slow adoption of cryptocurrencies, Ms. Kon reminds us how long it took us to start using email as our standard method of communication.

 

Back at the Exhibition Stage, an interesting panel was presented to the audience regarding Anti-money laundering (AML) / Know your customer (KYC) best practices. The moderator of the event was Nicholas Warren, who is the Senior Manager of Financial Services, Blockchain, and Fintech at CSB group. Joining him on the panel were Fiorentina D’Amore, Chief Compliance Officer of Bequant Exchange, Damian Mifsud, CEO of KnowMeNow and Dr. John Pigott, the Co-Founder, and CEO of ABE.

 

 

 

 

In the panel, several topics were discussed. The power of Blockchain and the change it will bring was discussed. Other topics mentioned were the issues of trust and thus the need for Blockchain. Blockchain would bring no centralization and no monopoly whilst also bringing the tools for anti-money laundering. The panel concluded by saying that Malta was smart by getting on the wagon quickly.

 

In an interesting presentation, Security Tokens and The Evolution of Financial Services, Zoe Adamovicz (CEO of NEUFUND), impressed the audience with her confident on-stage appearance. NEUFUND is an equity fundraising company built on the Blockchain framework. (About us) The main topic in her presentation was ownership and how blockchain can help. Ms. Adamovicz discussed that Wall Street would benefit from Blockchain for securities. She then pondered on whether Blockchain would actually need Wall Street.

Blockchain has several advantages and NEUFUND has ensured that they make the best use of these; direct transferability increased liquidity, programmability and fractional ownership. NEUFUND has been found in 2016 but Ms. Adamovicz’s involvement in the Blockchain industry far succeeds the beginning of the company. She boasts a large number of over 1000 investors of which several are also financial institutes.

 

Iconomi is a company which uses their Digital Asset Management Platform to allow people to manage their crypto-economy without needing any expertise. Jani Valjavec, the co-founder of ICONOMI gave a presentation at the Delta Summit to discuss the evolution of coins. The evolution has taken coins from tokens to bitcoins to tokens to utility tokens to security tokens. Mr. Valjavec discussed that utility tokens had no security since it was still new. Furthermore, he pointed out he feels that utility tokens make no sense but nobody cared. In this presentation, Mr. Valjavec presented eICN tokens. Users can use eICN tokens to transform tokens into real equity. (Zagar, 2018) (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Much More)

 

The audience at the Delta Summit were privileged to be present for a presentation by the Co-founder of Wikipedia, Dr. Larry Sanger. Dr. Larry Sanger mentioned that there are several countries which censor Wikipedia: China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Dr. Larry Sanger refers to Wikipedia as Phase one. Phase two is a project he is CIO of, which is a greater wiki. This greater wiki is known as Everipedia.

This greater wiki would sort data according to which groups the reader would fall under, be it by rating, nationality, gender or political views. Everipedia is a modern type of digital encyclopedia and maintains a higher level of content when compared to its older sibling, Wikipedia. Everipedia is built on Blockchain technologies and is decentralized, democratic (Proof-of-stake), has no central authority and provides a financial incentive to holders of the IQ tokens. (An Encyclopedia for the modern age)

Dr. Sanger states that the quality of the content is improved due to the users having to put their tokens at stake (proof-of-stake) depending on the quality of the content they provide. The articles in Everipedia go head to head with other articles for better ratings. This will prove to be an incentive for users to improve the quality of the articles they own. Before leaving the stage, Dr. Larry Sanger encouraged the audience to experience Everipedia first hand and to view the true benefits.

 

A large number of the attendees headed their way to the Exhibition Stage for the Revolut presentation. Dimitris Litsikakis, the Revolut country manager of Greece, Cyprus, and Malta promised to revolutionalize the way transactions are made in his presentation, A Sneak Peek on How Revolut will Break the Bank by informing attendees that Revolut offers users the real interbank exchange rate in a cryptocurrency of the user’s choice.

Within his presentation, Mr. Litsikakis presented the new Revolut card; Revolut Metal. Claiming that Revolut will break the bank due to banks being expensive, inconvenient and sneaky. Revolut charges no additional fees to transfer funds between accounts, even in different countries. People in Malta seem to be very fast to adopt Revolut into their lives. There were 35,000 users in Malta in just one month. After launching, an additional 10,000 new users in Malta were added to the figure. This was pretty impressive considering that there was no paid marketing.

So, how does Revolut fit in a Blockchain summit? Users can use their Revolut cards and accounts to buy cryptocurrencies such as Ripple and Bitcoin cash. Revolut is very secure and it is very easy to block purchases in different countries. If a user is in one country but a transaction was taken place in a different country, the user can easily block this from the application and the help of RITA, Revolut’s Intelligent Trouble Assistant.

Revolut offers a solution to business owners. Whereas setting up a business account at a bank would take a considerable amount of time, Revolut Business takes only 5 minutes to set up and holds 25 different currencies. Revolut promises the users that they could save up to 100 times the cost when using Revolut Business. Revolut has already seen 60,000 people registered with Revolut Business.

Mr. Litsikakis also pointed out that there is something for the developers. Developers can make use of the Open Business API so users can experience Revolut in any way they want. They can customize their own experience. Mr. Litsikakis closed by saying that they encourage Revolut Ambassadors to spread the word about Revolut in Malta.

 

Down at the Innovation Stage, Louis Giordimaina impressed the audience with his keynote, The digital airline passenger experience. Mr. Giordimaina discussed the evolution of In-flight entertainment. Being the former Air Malta CEO and Lufthansa Technik, and the current Director of Aircom Pacific Inc, Mr. Giordimaina has a lot of experience to share. (Louis Giordimaina)

In his keynote, Mr. Giordimaina discusses the evolution of the in-flight technology and how he remembers the introduction of screens for each passenger on airlines and it has now it has become a standard. He also discusses the evolution of bands; ku-bands and ka-bands. Ku-band utilizes frequencies of 12-18GHz whilst Ka-band utilizes bands of 26.5 – 40 GHz. (L/Ku/Ka-band Satellites – what does it all mean?, 2017)

 

One of the final keynotes was by Andrew Cachia and titled, Why your next financial advisor will be a robot. Andrew Cachia is the CTO at Wyzer and a FinTech Software Engineer. He is one of the youngest CTOs in Malta. Sharing his experiences which started at University where his final year thesis focused on Fintech solutions, it was this project that sparked an interest in him (and made him falsely believe that he would become an overnight millionaire). Mr. Andrew Cachia points out that in order to develop a solution to reap the true benefits of the Fintech industry, one needs computational power, to be free from emotional power, to be consistent, be adaptive, and to trust one’s gut instinct.

Overall, these were the highlights of the second day of the Delta Summit. The attendees seemed more than pleased with the execution of the second day and even more pleased with the high-profile lineup who shared their experiences and expertise in short keynotes, panel discussions or presentations. Attendees seemed genuinely interested, asked great questions and visited the stands on exhibition.

 

References

abcc. (n.d.). Retrieved from abcc: https://abcc.com/

About us. (n.d.). Retrieved from Neufund: https://neufund.org/about-us

An Encyclopedia for the modern age. (n.d.). Retrieved from Everipedia: https://everipedia.org/

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Much More. (n.d.). Retrieved from Iconomi: https://www.iconomi.net

Crypto payments platform UTRUST taps former PayPal and eBay executive Sanja Kon, as VP of Global Partnerships. (2018, September 2). Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/@UTRUST/crypto-payment-platform-utrust-taps-former-paypal-and-ebay-executive-sanja-kon-as-vp-of-global-19189d36083a

L/Ku/Ka-band Satellites – what does it all mean? (2017, September 11). Retrieved from GetConnected: https://www.getconnected.aero/2017/09/lkuka-band-satellites-mean/

Louis Giordimaina. (n.d.). Retrieved from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-giordimaina-b1865132/?originalSubdomain=mt

Shane, S. (2015, October 6). Why Entrepreneurs Should Think About Non-Dilutive Financing. Retrieved from Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251364

Theo Priestley. (n.d.). Retrieved from Theo Priestley: http://theopriestley.strikingly.com/

We are not just a digital marketing agency. (n.d.). Retrieved from Growthgurus: https://www.growthgurus.com/about-us/

Zagar, T. M. (2018, September 27). A New Chapter for ICONOMI: Transformation of Corporate Governance and Issuance of Equity Tokens. Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/iconominet/a-new-chapter-for-iconomi-transformation-of-corporate-governance-and-issuance-of-equity-tokens-dc603df2272b