On February 8, Gibraltar hosted the first event from the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference series. Over 200 people attended it; 17 speakers gave presentations. According to participants, the most topical reports were those dedicated to new blockchain legislation, organization of token sales, and cryptocurrency trading.

Impressions of participants

A representative of CastleHill, conference participant, has already published his report on the event. According to him, Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Gibraltar has changed his attitude to cryptocurrency and blockchain: “It became apparent to me that the blockchain technology is not a fad. I firmly believe that it will become a huge part of our future, and Gibraltar will lead the way!” he shared his impressions in the corporate blog. Other participants mark the intensive program, interesting topics, and wide opportunities for networking.

Main topics of the conference

During Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Gibraltar, experts discussed licensing of blockchain companies, the law on which has come into effect in early 2018, ICO (conduct, regulation prospects, and investments in tokens), and different aspects of tokenization.

The liveliest activity of the conference was the panel discussion. The role of moderator was taken by Naeem Aslam, Chief Market Analyst at ThinkMarkets, and Columnist at Forbes. The expert has huge experience of investing and trading at financial markets; he is a lecturer at the London School of Economics and holder of Young Irish Broker award. Together with six experts, he discussed the regulation of decentralized technologies.

Participants, topics, discussions

Among speakers of the conference one could find Mohammed Tayeb, head of Medicalchain (the company ran a successful ICO shortly before the conference); Kambiz Djafari, founder of Edgecoin.io educational platform; Bogdan Maslesa, Founder of Universal Crypto and well-known blockchain promoter in Cyprus; Jan Sammut, CEO at RefToken аnd ICO advisor;  Juan David Mendieta Villegas, CEO at Keyrock, developer of social blockchain solutions for Latin America; Eyal Rosen, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadCoin. The audience paid special attention to four presentations:

1. Jon Matonis, Chairman at Globitex. The expert is among top 100 personalities in the industry. He told about institutional cryptocurrency trading, the Globitex exchange, and the Globitex GBX token.
2. Joey Garcia, Fintech/Blockchain Financial Services Partner at ISOLAS LLP. The expert described the jurisdiction of Gibraltar and reviewed new laws on cryptocurrencies that came into effect in Gibraltar on January 1.
3. Christopher Emms, CEO at TokenKey, shared practical experience of organizing a token sale. Many listeners remembered the analogy he mentioned, between the Internet and blockchain: Internet users accounted for just 0.5% of global population in 1990s, and in 10 years, the audience increased to 225 million. Currently, less than 1% of global population use blockchain, but the potential is huge.
4. Ransu Salovaara, CEO at TokenMarket – “ICO market and best practices”. He analyzed the ICO market of 2017 and told about opportunities and advantages of TokenMarket ICO platform.

Companies that develop blockchain innovations presented their products in the exhibition area. They included telepresence service Ubiatar, crowdfunding blockchain platform Crowd for Angels, cryptocurrency exchange Exenium, and others. All participants of the exhibition area took part in the pitch session: in the form of a five-minute presentation, each of them told about their projects.

See you in Geneva!

On February 21, a new conference of the series, Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Switzerland, will take place in Geneva; around 300 participants are expected to attend it. Overall, in 2018, Smile-Expo plans to host more than 20 conferences on cryptocurrencies and blockchain in different countries of the world. News on forthcoming events can be found on the company’s website.