Blockchain businesses and law professionals are organizing a “WEB3: Impact the Future” summit in Lithuania, the country which has become a hotspot for the fintech market in Europe.
Country of Tech Innovations
Silicon Valley is no longer synonymous with innovation. More and more small countries are entering the hi-tech arena as successful startups emerge outside the big nations. In the list of the 62 most startup-friendly countries, 28 are small countries: Malta, Israel, Switzerland, and Lithuania, to name a few.
Lithuania is among the world’s top performers in terms of digitalization. Forbes acknowledged Lithuania as the provider of the fastest public WiFi in the world. Lithuania’s fintech sector attracted a record number of investments in 2021, with a 13% increase in the number of companies and a nearly 50% increase in the number of employees. With 147 fintech licenses issued, Lithuania has become the biggest and most vibrant fintech hub in the European Union (EU).
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The country is home to major players in fintech, such as crypto payment gateway Coingate. In 2021, the company won the Global Brands Award for Most Innovative Cryptocurrency Payment Gateway in Europe.
“Global and active Web3 developers are already working in Lithuania in one form or another. The country’s environment allows quick decisions and assimilation of new information. However, it needs to evolve legal environment for the breakthrough, so one of the parts of the conference will be devoted to the legal framework,” says Saulius Galatiltis, the head of UAB Bifinity, the official on-ramp and off-ramp crypto service provider for Binance ecosystem and other blockchain platforms.
The “WEB3: Impact the Future” summit will take place in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on the 7th of December, 2022. The event will focus on potential trajectories of Web3 development in the region and the world and aims to bring together Web3 enthusiasts, public authorities, fintech, digital businesses, and other sectors.
Chainalysis Representatives Will Hold Discussion With Regulators
A day before the event, the organizers are planning to discuss the development and potential of Web3 technology with parliamentary representatives and ministries, as well as investment and innovation agencies. They aim to bust the long-living myth that blockchain technology induces the potential risk of money laundering.
The organizers invited representatives of Chainalysis, a global leader in cryptocurrency investigation and transaction monitoring solutions, to the discussion. The company is one of the most reliable sources of information for tracing and analyzing all the operations on the blockchain worldwide.
“During the debate, we will try to dispel the myth that blockchains pose a high risk of money laundering. Blockchains can show, for example, all transactions made with Bitcoin since its inception in 2009.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Interpol, and similar law enforcement agencies in different countries use Chainanalysis analytical tools,” emphasizes Gediminas Laucius, Legal and Tax Services Partner at Lewben.
The organizers believe that the dialogue with the governmental authorities is crucial for the further development of Web3. The legal system needs to understand the importance of this innovation and put it into its political agenda.
Organizers believe that regulations are essential for the sector. The country’s authorities should regulate the accounting and taxation of digital assets to achieve the high level of transparency and trust needed for the future development of Web3 innovations.
“Most businesses, regulators, and society, in general, are content with the stereotype that Web3 and the metaverse are still just a place for frivolous games, entertainment, and unsustainable socializing.
The transformation processes begun in the information society are irreversible and are already fundamentally changing all the legal, fiscal, financial, political, economic, and social institutions that we know,” says Mindaugas Civilka, Partner at TGS Baltic, one of the conference organizers.
Organizers – Blockchain Researchers And Specialists
The initiative to organize the event came from businesses and organizations working with blockchain technologies in the country. One of the organizers is the research and development company SUPER HOW?, based in Lithuania. The company focuses on emerging technologies, such as AI, blockchain, extended reality, and quantum computing. The company is one of the founders of the Blockchain Lithuania Competence Center and was recognized as the “Fintech Innovator of the Year” in the Lithuanian Fintech Awards 2022.
Among other organizers are Crypto Economy Organisation, the law firm TGS Baltic, and the integrated business services group Lewben. The event is also partially sponsored by the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance.
Blockchain Technology is the Next Step for Internet
Andrius Bartminas, CEO at SUPER HOW?, predicts that Web3 technologies will become increasingly popular in the next 5-10 years. The current development of Web3 technology is part of the natural evolution of internet technology.
The CEO explains that the first stage of the Internet’s evolution (Web 1.0) covers 1991-2004. During this period, most users were content consumers, not creators. The current Web 2.0 era began in 2004 and is a period of high social networking, business concentration, and user-generated content.
The Web3 era is proposing something completely different: decentralized decision-making with unconditional ownership of digital assets and content are becoming essential. It also opens the way for the physical and virtual worlds to intertwine in a metaverse platform that the world’s major tech companies are slowly developing.
“The power of the third generation of online solutions is shifting to consumers, to autonomous, democratically controlled organizations. Content created with Web3 technologies already belongs to creators, not corporations like Meta or Google. Digital assets, such as electronic money, are also owned by the real owner rather than the bank so that they can make peer-to-peer payments without the need for intermediaries, i.e., a bank or other institution,” says Bartminas.
During the summit, the speakers will dive deeper into the discussion about the future possibilities for Web3 technology, finding the best regulatory framework to nourish innovation and transparency.
