Why is Malta the paradise island of iGaming and blockchain?

Why is Malta the paradise island of iGaming and blockchain?

by | Feb 27, 2020 | News

Malta is known to be one of the smallest countries in the world, and for the past years, it has been on everybody’s lips as the blockchain craze started. But Malta is also a hub for iGaming. Why is Malta the paradise island of iGaming and blockchain?

Why are all the iGaming and blockchain companies so drawn to Malta? Let’s talk about the exciting opportunities these companies have on the Mediterranean island.

Malta is THE iGaming and blockchain hub

Unlike any other hubs, Malta stands out by its diversity. Its geographical location ads as a bonus to the welcoming regulations and appealing culture. The overall practicality of business on the islands makes it the most desirable location for a business from the blockchain and iGaming sector.

Malta has approved 3 important laws (the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Act, the Innovative Technological Arrangement and Services Act, and the Virtual Financial Asset Act) that have set a regulatory framework for the blockchain business. These three laws allow businesses to operate into a regulated environment, having the necessary legal tools.

Malta is the leader in the industry of iGaming and blockchain and remains the top destination for any business wishing to develop to the next level.

The diversity of the iGaming and blockchain business and staff

These 2 industries have a large number of services behind them and Malta is the country enabling all of them to easily come together.

Malta is considered the melting pot of all services needed for the 2 industries. Law firms and SEO agencies specialised in iGambling and blockchain are waiting for new partners in Malta. The unmatched resources offered by the country of Malta is one important factor in why this tiny Mediterranean island took the lead of these successful industries.

The diversity promised by the thriving services needed for the industries of iGaming and blockchain also means a high dose of multiculturalism in the Maltese society.

Malta has become home to professionals from all over the globe. The constant recruitment of multicultural staff is the proven way to success for business looking to step into new markets, which aim to offer a more familiar interface to their international users.

Big name companies relocated to Malta

Malta is the headquarters for many online casinos and blockchain companies. Swedish and British online casinos considered Malta the best location for relocation of their main office.

HashCash Consultants, Binance, and BitBay are some of the big cryptocurrency exchanges have also taken the opportunity to operate in a blockchain and crypto-friendly environment, by moving their operations to Malta.

All these companies only make it a more appealing location for new companies who want to make it big in the European and International markets. The business calendar is a busy one in Malta, as the year is loaded with business community events, and this enables great networking opportunities for those attending them.

Malta is the set location of live casinos cryptocurrency organizations

While Malta first became famous for its location, idyllic landscape and warm climate, it is now more than a movie set. Did you know that Gladiators, World War Z, Captain Philips and The Count of Monte Cristo were filmed in Malta?

But that’s not all the filming being done on this island. The largest online casino has live sets in Malta, where real croupiers deal at a blackjack table or spin the roulette. Dealers from all over the world perform here, on a daily basis.

But Malta is also home to a nonprofit organization that aims to aid cryptocurrency adoption in Malta. Bitmalta is working closely with the Malta Chamber of Commerce in its pursuit to promote the use of cryptocurrency.

The blockchain and iGaming industry is growing every year

iGaming is contributing 12% to Malta’s GDP and the industry is still ascending. The online gambling market is estimated to reach $94.4 billion by 2024.

in 2019, the Transport Minister of Malta signed a partnership with Omnitude, a UK blockchain startup, aiming to improve the public transport service using the distributed ledger technology.

With its relaxed regulation framework and new technological elements, such as virtual reality, AI and blockchain inovation, it’s clear why Malta is flooded with new ideas, investment opportunities and non-stop recruitment.

Malta is where all the industry professionals meet

These powerful industries also organize giant events which involve a huge number of attendees from all over the world.

SiGMA, the most important iGaming event, brought together 12,500 attendees from 80 countries and had over 400 business participating in 2019, in Malta. Each year, the event gathers more attendees than the previous event, setting a new record.

Many crypto and blockchain events happen all over the world, but one of the largest one, is the AIBC Summit (Annual Malta AI & Blockchain Summit), and one of the two biannual conferences happens in Malta.

The Blockchain Summit in Malta is a top priority for all tech companies from all over the world and the 2020 events are expected to connect over 10000 delegates, 400 exibitors and over 1000 investors. The Blockchain Summit is the place to present the newest companies, gain brand awareness and engage in all the networking events happening at that time.

Malta is a paradise island

On top of all that businesses oportunities, Malta is a paradise island. Located in the middle of the Mediteranean Sea, it is blessed with amazing weather all year round, and the nature is beautiful. As for the cultural side, it offers just as much. Malta’s geopgraphical position has always made it a strategic point for the great empires of the world.

Malta has the best of the best: culture, history, landscapes, sea. It is a wonderful destination for business and for leisure.

Ethereum Foundation donated to UNICEF to Embrace Blockchain

Ethereum Foundation donated to UNICEF to Embrace Blockchain

by | Feb 25, 2020 | News

The Ethereum Foundation made a donation to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) worth $150,000 in Bitcoin and Ethereum, into their experimental crypto fund in October 2019.

Aya Miyaguchi, the Ethereum Foundation Director stated:

“We are still discussing the details on what we can do together, but we have decided to continue support for the next couple of years,”
“I believe a partnership with a group like UNICEF can maximize our impact without shifting our focus from what we still need to do to improve Ethereum as a technology.”

The Kazakhstan branch of UNICEF developed an Ethereum-based internal payment system. The system is used for transferring funds between the UNICEF headquarters and local programs.

UNICEF’s partnership specialist, Oleksandra Gaskevych, stated:

“We can see now clearly it’s operational and it’s great for the organization. So we will continue to work on that,”
“We only have used ethereum so far, for smart contracts. We’re thinking maybe we could test bitcoin as well for digital currency transfers, so we’ll see.”

The system is not fully set yet, as the UNICEF budgets need multiple signatures. But the last touches are being made by the Kazakhstan team. Up to this day, the amount of paperwork required by its operations is overwhelming. A digital process will come much more in hand, and everything will be more transparent and easy to track and follow.

The Ethereum-based system is expected to be fully functional in 2021.

“We can easily adapt it to other Russian-speaking countries in the region,”

Tunisian pilots

UNICEF has also become a partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA) and wants to create a system for distributing cryptocurrency.

The co-lead of UNICEF Ventures, Chris Fabian, stated that the crypto fund is starting to fund startups. One such crypto startup is Coinsence, a Tunisian token project which used ERC-20 tokens.

The pilot program for Coinsence has more than 200 participants, in the town of Hammamet, according to its founder, Karim Chabrak.

“There are communities that have no money and a lot of unemployed youth,”
“Communities need to be able to address that without waiting for governments to act.”

The residents of the city, who participated in the pilot program, used the token to pay for services or to offer discounts. The goal is to reduce the unemployment rate and to create productive spending habits. The founder of Coinsence, Karim Chabrak want to create a national association, with a legal framework, to help and support other communities to issue their local token.

Chabrak also stated:

“We heard about bitcoin in 2010,”
“But we are trying to build currencies that aren’t speculative, that are part of the commons.”

These experiments and programs were founded by the Ethereum Foundation. Coinsence received 50 ETH for their pilot program.

The Ehereum Foundation also founded Atix Labs, an Argentinian startup. The funds were used to develop software for the Kazakhstan program.

The Ethereum Foundation approach

With this agreement with UNICEF, the Ethereum Foundation and community is now investing in global outreach, and not necessarily in implementing blockchain solution.

“They’ve made the community available to us for a variety of things,” Fabian said.

UNICEF hopes to find external partners willing to accept cryptocurrency and their teams are now focused on training youth to develop solutions for custom needs of the communities they live in.

Blockchain Courses Will Be Top Trend in 2020 according to Deloitte

Blockchain Courses Will Be Top Trend in 2020 according to Deloitte

by | Feb 20, 2020 | News

According to Deloitte, 2020 could be the “blockchain decade”. 2019 was a great year for Blockchain. Huge companies have embraced blockchain and the trend continues in 2020.

This is the moment that the blockchain enthusiasts have been waiting for. Blockchain is starting to create a real impact cross-industries.

Deloitte published its 2019 Global Blockchain Survey, in which it recognizes blockchain as a priority for companies.

The blockchain trend goes beyond the private sector. World’s governments have seen blockchain’s potential and are trying to accelerate the adoption of blockchain.

The good news is that even former critics of the technology are now shifting. The US Federal Reserve is now exploring a digital dollar on blockchain.

Consider all these, Deloitte might be right in considering 2020 the “blockchain decade”. Each technology had a rough time at its beginnings but also took all the interest for a decade. The internet had its decade in the early 2000s. Social media took the world by surprise in the 2010s and the blockchain and IoT can dominate the 2020s.

But all this demand for blockchain drives demand for blockchain developers, the supply is nowhere near to compensate. Some reports state that the demand for blockchain engineers got up by 51% in 2019, at a global scale.

But blockchain development is still a new feature. Universities are slow in implementing courses to prepare future blockchain engineers. And this raises the obvious question. With all this demand and the lack of traditional education in aid, where do we get the engineers to build the future of blockchain?

The Ivan on Tech Academy: the World’s Largest Blockchain Academy

Someone already thought of a solution.

The Ivan on Tech Academy is an online blockchain academy, probably the largest at the moment. The academy prepares students with all they need to know about crypto and blockchain.

Also, the academy helps its students to get a real job in blockchain development.

The courses provided by the blockchain academy do not have any prerequisites. That means they are open for anyone who is willing to learn about the blockchain technology.

After LinkedIn announced the raise of blockchain jobs, many have decided to look for blockchain courses, regardless of having any programming experience.

Who is behind Ivan on Tech Academy?

The name and idea came from the Ivan on Tech YouTube channel. The channel has over 200k subscribers and it focuses on blockchain and crypto education.

Who rules the cryptocurrency world?

Who rules the cryptocurrency world?

by | Feb 18, 2020 | News

Forbes recently published its Forbes Fintech 50 top, a top of the Most Innovative Fintech Companies In 2020 and six blockchain companies are in it.

The Forbes top 50 has 19 companies listed as first-timers on the annual Forbes Fintech top. Forbes is definitely more inclined to include startups with good ideas, no matter how small.

The fintech market is growing as the values of the companies are exploding. The proof is indisputable. The 2020 top includes 13 companies valued at more than $2 billion. Last year’s top included only eight companies which were worth that much.

What do all these companies included in the Fintech 2020 top have in common? They are all enabling faster and cheaper financial services, and they all operate in the US as private companies.

Who rules the cryptocurrency world?

According to Forbes, these six companies are leading the crypto space worldwide.

Coinbase

Coinbase aims to “bring about more economic freedom, innovation, efficiency, and equality of opportunity in the world”.

To this day, Coinbase is probably one of the easiest to use crypto exchange platform and digital currency wallet. Coinbase is the perfect exchange to start learning about digital currency like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

We included Coinbase in the top of crypto exchanges for beginners. If you don’t have a crypto wallet in Coinbase, join now to get $10 in Bitcoin when they buy or sell $100 or more on Coinbase!

Funding: $525mn from Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Union Square Ventures and others

Latest valuation: US$8.1bn

Founded: June 2012

HQ: San Francisco, California

CEO: Brian Armstrong, 37

Fact: Coinbase Custody now holds $8bn in assets for 200 institutional clients.

Ripple

Ripple uses an open-source protocol to instantly transfer funds anywhere in the world.

Ripple aims to help improve the current complex global payment system, which is unreliable, pricey and sluggish, and to eventually replace it with its platform, which has its own cryptocurrency.

Funding: $293mn from Accenture, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and others

Latest valuation: US$10bn

Founded: 2012

HQ: San Francisco, California

CEO: Brad Garlinghouse, 49

Fact: Ripple works with initiatives and organisations to advance socially responsible uses of blockchain.

MakerDAO

MakerDAO is an Ethereum based financial platform that enables its customers to loan cryptocurrency. The platform’s token, the Dai, it’s an ERC 20 token, pegged to the US dollar. They refer to Dai as being the world’s first decentralized stable digital cash.

Funding: $63mn from Andreessen Horowitz, Dragonfly Capital, Polychain Latest.

Latest valuation: US$500mn

Founded: 2014

HQ: New York  

CEO: Rune Christensen, 29

Fact: MakerDAO is a community project that has already attracted more than 400 outside developers; last year it generated $10mn in interest.

Axoni

Axoni is a company offering distributed ledger blockchain solutions for post-trade data management for credit and equity swaps. Axoni has implemented its solutions in partnerships with global banks and financial providers.

Axoni’s portfolio includes distributed-ledger technology deployments, bespoke smart contract development, and analytics tools.

Funding: US$59mn

Latest valuation: $171mn

Founded: 2015

HQ: New York

CEO: Greg Schvey, 33

Fact: Axoni has deployed its distributed ledger into the world’s most complex asset classes with proven results.

Chainalysis

Chainalysis is a blockchain analytic tool used by government agencies, exchanges and financial institutions in over 40 countries. Its aim is to “create transparency for a global economy built on blockchains” and to provide guidelines on how to use best this technology.

Funding: $45mn from Accel, Benchmark, and others.

Latest valuation: US$266mn

Founded: 2014

HQ: New York

CEO: Michael Gronager, 49

Fact: The company’s customers include bitpay, Barclays, Square and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Everledger

Everledger is a company that used the blockchain, AI and IoT to track goods, from production material to their selling point. This feature aims to build up the confidence of consumers in the marketplace and focuses on sustainability.

Funding: $20mn from Tencent, Graphene, Rakuten and others.

Latest valuation: US$100mn

Founded: 2015

HQ: London, UK

CEO: Leanne Kemp, 47

Fact: Everledger pursues the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, particularly around gender equality, economic growth and responsible consumption and production.

IBM’s vice president of blockchain technologies talks about money

IBM’s vice president of blockchain technologies talks about money

by | Feb 12, 2020 | News

According to Jerry Cuomo, the VicePresident of IBM blockchain technologies, the enterprise feature is an enabler of spending big money.

“It is driving additional spend,”
“When you look at the direct attribution of the actual dollars spent on blockchain, we are seeing that for every dollar spent, $15 is spent on other cloud services.”

This is perhaps a hint on IBM’s current business strategy, as it tries to bring enterprise blockchain closer to the company’s cloud offering. IBM might try to pivot their business plans as distributed ledgers are losing some of the initial hype all around the world.

IBM’s VP believes that blockchain is only 20% of a blockchain application and the rest of the solutions lays in other technologies.

“Blockchain is a new class of enterprise application,”
“It plays into trends like app modernization and new cloud-native applications, data and analytics. It crosses all those things.”

IBM’s business strategy is shifting massively after last year’s acquisition of the open-source software, Red Hat. In their last quarter of 2019, IBM posted about their unexpected revenue growth: Red Hat had 24% revenue growth and the cloud and cognitive software revenue grew with 9%.

As Cuomo stated regarding the shift in priorities:

IBM has “put its chips down on the table in a very aggressive way around the hybrid space.”

What is a hybrid cloud?

According to McKinsey & Company, the hybrid cloud is a combo of on-premise, public and private cloud, which allows for different workloads to be handled across the different platforms. The hybrid cloud market is worth $1.2 trillion.

Can blockchain and the cloud work together?

The IBM VP talked about a symbiosis between blockchain and cloud, which will unite Hyperledger Fabric, a Linux incubator for blockchain enterprise projects, and Kubernetes, a hybrid cloud platform which automates clusters of services. The latter is a field of expertise for Red Hat.

“Hyperledger Fabric works well with Kubernetes,”
“Many of the things we’ve done around Chaincode, which is the way we plug smart contracts into Fabric, is to make sure it runs really well on that type of containerized environment with buttoned-down security. Red Hat gave us that motivation.”

Jerry Cuomo, the VicePresident of IBM blockchain technologies, described 2018 as “more of a Wild West,” he added:

“We had a lot of projects. Some would hit, others missed. The ideas weren’t always completely baked. Going into 2020, clients continue to get smarter.”

The fact remains, the enterprise blockchain world has seen some development lately. Might there yet be some bloodletting on the blockchain side at IBM? 

Cuomo says no: “We are very healthy here in blockchain land.”

Australia Published Blockchain Roadmap

Australia Published Blockchain Roadmap

by | Feb 11, 2020 | Blockchain, News

Australia is serious about implementing blockchain into its daily operations. The Blockchain Roadmap has been published to guide Australia’s productivity in all industries.

Australia is keen to use blockchain in its future developments

Australia’s government announced the development of a National Blockchain Roadmap over one year ago, and spent over 100,000 AUD on it. Today, the roadmap is ready and will be utilized to help develop the usage of blockchain in all its industries.

According to Karen Andrews, the Miniter of Industry, Science and Technology, the government worked with various researchers to complete the blockchain roadmap.

The minister is a strong believer of the beneficial results of incorporating blockchain in bost public and private sectors, which will lead to a significant increase in jobs:

“Blockchain technology offers great potential to save money, initiate new business and export opportunities, boost economic growth, and create new jobs. Governments and private industries all stand to benefit from embracing this technology.

Employment opportunities in blockchain are growing substantially, with rapid growth in job advertisements since 2016.”

The blockchain roadmap includes all the essential sectors, not just the financial industry. The roadmap mentions education, transportation and the agricultural sectors.

The minister believes that Australia can become a leader in the new digital era after it will combine the blockchain’s roadmap with the already published one for Artificial Intelligence.

The potential risks of adopting the blockchain technology for mass usage

The government is also paying attention to the potential threats of implementing blockchain on a mass scale. For the blockchain roadmap to successfully work, it needs to be mentioned in a regulatory framework.

A major challenge of such massive use of blockchain is to maintain trust, the data integrity and security. Balancing privacy and transparency is a challenge.

The Australian government decided to spend 350,000 AUD more and work with Standards Australia, which will develop a regulatory framework which will guarantee the blockchain’s integrity, using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Australia is recognizing the efforts other countries are making to develop the blockchain technology and is willing to cooperate with the UK, China and Singapore to remain a leading country in this blockchain era.