Malta as ‘Blockchain Island’

Malta is one of the smallest countries in the world, with a population of less than 500,000. The island is a speck in the Mediterranean Sea, between Europe and Africa.

Malta gained its national independence from Great Britain in 1964.

As a small country with limited natural resources, they have the willingness and ability to move quickly to adopt new opportunities that can grow their economy.

Malta has made itself very welcoming to blockchain and cryptocurrency companies by establishing friendly regulation and low taxes for such businesses.

Hence, capital, start-ups and talent are leaving less friendly jurisdictions to set up shop in Malta.

So far, the welcoming hand has benefited Malta with a new influx of revenue for the country.

The above video includes interviews with the Finance Minister of Malta, Edward Scicluna; Changpeng Zhao (Binance); John McAfee; Tim Byun (OKEX ); Alexandre Dreyfus (chiliZ); and Marc Taverner (Bitfury).

Malta Blockchain Summit

In early November, Malta, the “Blockchain Island,” hosted one of the biggest blockchain events in Europe — the 2018 Malta Blockchain Summit.

The “Blockchain Island” is not only a center for international blockchain commerce, but it’s also on its way to becoming a “Top AI nation” as well.

In other words, in the same way Malta has established a friendly regulatory environment for blockchain technology, it is doing the same for artificial intelligence.

The Dark Side of The Chain

https://youtu.be/BX_3fFUUhVQ

John McAfee from McAfee Crypto Team & Luxcore, Brandon Smietana from Skycoin and Monty Munford (moderator) from Mob76 discuss “The Dark Side of the Chain” at the 2018 Malta Blockchain Summit.

At times distressing and other times colorful, their discussion includes kidnapping, murder, guns and prostitutes.

Additionally, Smietana talks about the origin of Bitcoin as a money system backed my mathematics instead of humans, who are prone to corruption. He describes the current fiat monetary system as a debt ponzi scheme and that the earliest Bitcoin proponents were Libertarian, real-money advocates before the speculators came in and dominated the landscape.

McAfee discusses forwarding the adoption of crypto by actually using crypto for purchases where accepted.

What is Binance?

Binance is a crypto exchange for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Some of the factors that have made it attractive to crypto traders include its availability in multiple languages, fast order processing and the fact that it transacts numerous digital currencies.

Binance is only for trading cryptocurrencies, and does not handle fiat currencies.

Due to evolving global regulations, Binance moved from China, where it was established, to Japan and then Taiwan and as of March 2018, relocated to Malta (Island country south of Italy).