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](https://steemit.com/payger/@payger/how-does-the-payger-wallet-work-1540833005). 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. ![20181101_185007.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdR96FX1ybpaEKfgo9QAwGpvrL3gSSPwWut5XnRGyREcL/20181101_185007.jpg) Definitely representing to the fullest! # PM's am appointment ![20181101_100400.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYsYDHqpaVC8JTTtanbVi27i2ZPGTnWMXAHvy2eqYJ6r6/20181101_100400.jpg) Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat kicked things off early, this guy is definitely crypto bullish! # Spitting knowledge ![20181101_155918.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQwoCskfyfxd3UPyg5jKgAqwMTkmKFYUGw67Nj2hkUGvc/20181101_155918.jpg) John Mcafee, flanked by heavies, whiskey in hand... telling it how it is! # After party anyone? ![20181101_193850.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYYC9NdUUSFGpyrHhtrNnnhSrP41hnDiXVR1mXqTrv9ZA/20181101_193850.jpg) 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!