ISOLAS, one of Gibraltar’s leading DLT firms, attended and participated in the Gibraltar Day in Tel Aviv events organised jointly by the Gibraltar Government and the Gibraltar Israel Chamber of Commerce headed up by Ayelet and Eran Shay of Benefit Business Solutions Gibraltar.
The events consisted of a welcome reception at the Crowne Plaza Tel Aviv City Centre where the Minister for Commerce, Albert Isola, welcomed all attendees from Gibraltar and Israel to the event and celebrated the strong ties between the two communities.
The following day, an intense morning of panels discussing the virtues of doing business in Gibraltar and the background to the embracing of this new business activity in Gibraltar was concluded with a panel on the development of the DLT provider regulations in Gibraltar. Selwyn Figueras, Partner at ISOLAS LLP, spoke on the panel, explaining why Gibraltar had taken to warmly to this area of business when other jurisdictions may have chosen to steer clear of it.
“I think the answer is actually quite a clear one” explained Mr Figueras. “We’ve been here and we’ve done this before, in relation to the online gambling/gaming sector which is now one of the four key contributors to Gibraltar’s economy. The development of Gibraltar as a well-regulated, highly regarded centre of excellence for the online gaming business was not accidental. A combination of the vision of successive administrations and the hard work of a committed team of professionals ensured that, over the last 25 years, Gibraltar has been able to become the world’s capital for the best online gaming operators in the world. We have the recipe, and now we’re applying the principles to the DLT business.”
Selwyn Figueras concluded by saying that “the cryptocurrency and wider DLT space, and in particular the Gibraltar Government’s approach to dealing with it, has meant that we’ve been able to embrace this disruptive influence in financial services in a way which aligns three apparently divergent needs – the protection of market participants, the provision of a regulated environment from which operators can run their business and the protection of the jurisdiction’s reputation. Working on those three objectives, I’m certain that Gibraltar is developing a business model in this space upon which long term and sustainable economic activity has already been and will continue to be created and nurtured for the long term.”