Autumn 2018 gave way to a large variety of conferences, ranging from the Malta Blockchain Summit which boasted over 5,000 attendees, over to the World Blockchain Forum in London that took place in September. These were the best conferences from around the globe. Were you there?

Malta Blockchain Conference:

It may have seemed like your LinkedIn news feed was flooded with updates from the Malta Blockchain Conference. This was attended by some of the most sought-after and influential people in blockchain, including John McAfee and the Prime Minister of Malta, Honorable Joseph Muscat. Although the weather wasn’t the greatest, that didn’t deter the nearly 8,500 people that showed up to one of the biggest events in the blockchain calendar.

The Hackathon at this conference had one of the largest prizes in the year, EUR 50,000. There was also an extremely competitive ICO Pitch contest with four of the brightest ICO projects.

The biggest complaint: the booths were packed a little too tightly which made foot traffic tough, but that was just because of the sheer number of attendees. Next year’s event is expected to be in a much larger location. Stay tuned for more details!

World Blockchain Forum, London

This event was featured across many of the largest mainstream media channels in the world, such as The Guardian, Time, Slate, Vice, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, and more. It was attended by some of the largest players in the industry.

The keynote this year came from the Moe Levin, the CEO of Keynote. He spoke about the importance of collaboration in a constantly changing industry. Levin commented on the stability and progress that the industry has made over the past year. He said that it comes down to the conversation at events like the World Blockchain Forum event in London. Through conversation, Levin said that’s how the industry can move forward.

Singapore Blockchain Summit

What stands out the most about this event is the sponsors, which include Deloitte, Cisco, KPMG, IBM, and EY. As opposed to many other conferences which span the length of 2–3 days, this conference was densely packed into one day, which also added to its value. With only 700 attendees, the conference was intimate, but that allowed the conversation to be heard over the bustle which usually comes from bigger conferences with many presenters, sponsors, and overcrowding from teams. The speaker list of this event included representatives from Deutsche Bank, Air France, Diageo, and r3.

Some of the topics covered for this event included Creation of a Standard of Trust in Transactions, Overcoming Challenges of Working with DLT, and HealthTech Meets BlockTech.

In Closing

These conferences brought in some of the biggest names in the industry. Although they were different in structure, each one attracted different sides of the blockchain industry. From the beaches of Malta, to the conference halls of Singapore, these conferences helped carry the conversation around blockchain forward. Onward and upward.