TEA Malta Highlights: Transparent accounting for the digital age

Coin Geek

2 days ago

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The second Triple Entry Accounting (TEA) Conference took place at the Salini Resort in sunny Malta. The location was perfect for two days of discussing the academic and commercial opportunities surrounding Triple Entry Accounting while enjoying each other's company in the evenings, thanks to organized dinners and outings.
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Our group consisted of academics, auditors, entrepreneurs, inventors, students and other professionals interested in the future of triple entry accounting. Everyone in the room was engaged from start to finish each day, actively listening to presentations, asking questions and providing feedback, all conducted in a roundtable format.
For those who are not aware, triple entry accounting creates tamper-evident, decentralized ledgers by adding a third, immutable entry shared among all parties involved. Blockchain is an implementation of triple entry accounting.
Ian Grigg, the inventor of Triple Entry Accounting (and Ricardian Contracts), was the conference Chair and was crucial in inspiring the discussions.
'TEA is an exotic thing and there are a bunch of professionals out there who found it to be very interesting and we're all wondering what happens next,' Grigg shared with CoinGeek.
'So the goal of the conference is to bring as many of those people together and start swapping anecdotes and discussions and ideas about how to make it move forward,' he said.
Arthur Doohan, Co-Chair of the TEA Conference, said the purpose of this conference and those that follow are to provide a focus for academic research and perhaps a clearing house for those who are practically trying to use it.
'Basically to foster the development and the utilization of triple entry practices,' he said.
Renowned artificial intelligence (AI) expert Konstantinos Sgantzos, head of the environmental subsector of Megalopolis lignite mining directorate at PPC Group, believes TEA is a 'hidden gem' that needs to be projected in today's world.
'I think [TEA] solves problems that nobody saw…nobody saw those problems emanating before Triple Entry Accounting,' he said.
A recent Block Dojo graduate, Bridget Doran, founder/CEO of Traceport, was also in attendance and said TEA had interested her for many years.
'I think that just the concept of triple entry accounting is what's really basic and so to hear all the different ideas and ways that it can be implemented is exciting,' she said.
Throughout the two days, many real-world use cases of TEA were presented, including everything from Hollywood to auditing, informal savings groups, government-issued benefits and AI.
'Hollywood's famous for having opaque or fake accounting systems and depreciation schedules and things that can't be monitored or audited without a lot of money,' shared Ted Rivera, the founder of Block Chain Studios, LLC.
'And so I think triple entry accounting is just giving us a verifiable third party record that's immutable and auditable in real time,' he added.
Torje Vingen Sunde, co-founder & CTO of Abendum, has a background in auditing and has made it his life's mission to get everyone onto a TEA system.
'We're not replacing the auditors. We're making the nature of the occupation much more attractive,' he shared after his presentation.
'We're automating the repetitive, less interesting, some would say boring, parts of the work, and we let the auditor spend more time on the interesting part of the work, which is getting to know the business, knowing the industry, using the evidence and putting everything together,' he said.
Hakim Mamoni, Liquidity Controller of HoverTrusts, presented on informal saving groups, essentially groups of people who want to help each other save money.
'Those people are mostly managing cash. Triple entry accounting can help them create a system where it becomes more transparent for all the members of the group to see how the cash is being managed how where the cash is being lent, who is contributing correctly, who is paying their loans, etc etc,' he shared.
The TEA Conference Manager, Andre Bonello, presented his vision on harnessing TEA to help families in need.
'In Malta and in Europe, there are a lot of people who are suffering from poverty and we can use technology to help these people,' he explained.
'Through the concept of CBDCs, there will be a specific currency dedicated to these people so they can have essential needs, such as food and medicine for them and their loved ones, so with the help of triple entry accounting, this could be done and it will be transparent, accountable,' Bonello added.
Sgantzos talked about the synergies between AI and TEA, an area he is particularly passionate about.
'This era from the first model, ChatGPT, up until now, keeps pushing new data out that is created from AI. So the original information that came from humans, which are the original useful information, is constantly declining. So we need to mark this kind of content and there is no better way to do it than triple entry accounting and distributed ledger technology,' he explained.
Educating newcomers on TEA was another focus of the event, particularly university students who were delighted to have the opportunity to attend.
Robert Sciberras Herrera, a student at the University of Malta, said his main takeaway was how TEA can remove the repetitive nature of auditing, which is precisely what Sunde presented.
'[TEA] could snatch that part of the repetitive work from the audit profession, and the practitioner could just focus on the theoretical aspects rather than the laborious, repetitive tasks,' Herrera shared.
Thanks to thoughtful presentations, group discussion and engaging evening activities, everyone walked away from TEA Conference 2025 with a wonderful experience and excitement about what the future holds in this space.
'We saw through these presentations that people come up with a concept, with a purpose, with a goal for the future, which is very exciting,' said Bonello.
'There are all kinds of people; there are students who came here who do not understand about this system and who do not know anything about blockchain, but they're excited and they are here and we are here all together,' he added.
Watch: Utilizing Triple Entry Accounting
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