A Maltese entrepreneur has transitioned from being a cryptocurrency guru into being an artificial intelligence evangelist.
Self-styled venture capitalist Benjamin Cassar Montalto, 23, from Madliena, said he was always on the lookout for emerging tech trends.
“I’ve always had a hustler mindset. During my final year at St Edward’s, I started my own cryptocurrency called Ħexacoin with seed capital. Or, as you normies would call it, ‘money from my parents’,” Cassar Montalto said.
“I managed to trick… I mean convince quite a few rich people to invest a lot of money in Ħexacoin after I told them it was going to end up as the official currency of Blockchain Island, but then I got bored and sold my stake for a nice six-figure sum. The investors ended up losing everything when the whole blockchain thing fizzled out, but risk is just part and parcel of the crypto game, bro, you know? Also my dad made the court case go away.”
The young businessman is now investing the money he made from his crypto days into artificial intelligence, which he describes as the next big thing.
“I swear bro, we’re at the start of an AI revolution that’s going to solve all the world’s problems. Climate change, cancer and war will all be things of the past if we just embrace the technology and let people like me lead civilisation into a bright future.
“Right now, for example, I’m developing a chatbot for the real estate industry that sends hundreds of property listings to anyone who writes a Facebook post containing words like ‘home’, ‘house’ or ‘live’. It’s not quite the cure for cancer but it’s the kind of earth-shattering innovation that’s going to make me a boatload of money when I sell it to letting agencies,” he said.
Cassar Montalto said he was also working on ‘Chat GPT for cats’.
“You put your phone near your cat and when it meows, the AI will tell you your feline friend is hungry and automatically order pet food from the store that my dad owns. It’s going to be a game-changer for the middle-aged women I’ll be marketing it to with video endorsements by deepfake Keith Demicoli,” he said.
