The only country that has made bitcoin (BTC) legal tender remains El Salvador, but in Lugano, located in southeastern Switzerland, there is a plan for the cryptocurrency pioneer to become more and more accepted in daily life. of the locals. To do this, the government authorities have established a strategic alliance with Tether Operations Limited, a company that issues the popular stablecoin Tether (USDT).
The mayor of Lugano, Michele Foletti, filed today Plan B, as you called the innovation project based on Bitcoin and Tether, to turn the city into a hub o operations center to incubate new projects based on blockchains.
“Lugano’s Plan B is to make the city a hub for European Bitcoin adoption, and a model of financial freedom for the whole world,” said Bitfinex CEO JL Van Der Velde, who is also one of the strategic partners on board the project. “In the coming months we will lay the groundwork to embark on this task,” he added.
To foment the adoption of bitcoin and Tether in all businesses in the citylocal authorities have created a fund of more than USD 3 million.
“It means that when a store is interested in integrating a cryptocurrency payment system they will be assisted by a team of people and will have funds already available to enable everything their business requires,” said Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether.
A Bitcoin hub in the center of Europe
The mayor of Lugano has also created a USD 100 million fund to support startups that wish to establish themselves in the city and transfer their own staff.
We will make Lugano an ideal space for businesses to thrive.” So we are going to roll out the red carpet to facilitate the establishment of companies and individuals. For this reason, we have minimized bureaucratic obstacles to allow them to concentrate on their jobs and not on carrying out all these procedures.
Pietro Poretti, director of economic development of Lugano.
In this sense, Plan B integrates a document that contains a series of guidelines approved by the municipal executive council of the city, as Poretti commented, although he did not give details about this regulation.
In addition, Lugano wants to improve relations with the academic world by offering a special curriculum on Bitcoin and the Lightning network in universitiess local and to boost it has made available 500 scholarships for it.
The first sample of all this Lugano Plan B will be presented at the end of next October, the date on which the city will host the Bitcoin World Forum event.
In any case, Lugano is not the first Bitcoin-based project for a city because it already in Latin America there is a similar project. This is Bitcoin City, the bitcoiner territory that, in November of last year, was presented by Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador.
As CriptoNoticias reported at the time, Bitcoin City will be powered by geothermal energy and will be nearly tax-free. In the center of this city there will be a plaza with a large “B” for Bitcoin carved into it.
Apparently, the Bitcoin Museum will also be installed there, an institution where “people will learn about the evolution of money”, from stones to cryptocurrencies, according to the presidency of the Central American country.