Swiss City Lugano Will Recognize Bitcoin And Tether As Legal Tender

Lugano, a city in Switzerland, announced the that will recognize cryptocurrencies as legal tender.

Michele Foletti, the mayor of the City of Lugano, said in a Lugano’s Plan B event that Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and Lugano’s own LVGA Points token will be recognized as de-facto currencies.

Mayor Foletti spoke in a panel alongside with Pietro Poretti, the director of city of Lugano, JL Van Del Velde, the CEO of Tether and Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether, about the implications of the progressive decision.

18 Months In The Making

According to Poretti, the decision to accept Bitcoin and Tether as legal tender took 18 of work. Lugano started experimenting with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency payments in late 2020 by establishing a loyalty program with its proprietary points token called LVGA, through Lugano’s Proof-of-Authority blockchain, developed last year.

Last September, El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, which was likely a driver to speed up others to make the same decision.

While, Poretti said that the decision to make cryptocurrencies legal tender was mainly driven by Lugano’s history of adopting technological developments.

“Lugano is the economic capital of southern Switzerland and has always been a leader in the creation of new opportunities.”

Lugano partnered with Tether and recognized its proprietary stablecoin, USDT, as legal tender alongside Bitcoin.

“Collaborating with a company the caliber of Tether is a magnet that will attract more companies to come to Lugano.”

Lugano will offer companies, who move their operations to the city, a generous incentive package enabled with the help of Tether.

According to Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether, the company partnered with the city to create a $100 million incentive fund aimed at startups that relocate their headquarters and employees to Lugano. Also, Tether will play a part in the creation of a massive startup hub in the center of Lugano that will host tech startups from around the world.

Ardoino mentioned that Polygon the main infrastructure partner in facilitating stablecoin payments in Lugano. Polygon is the second-largest network hosting Tether’s USDT stablecoin, after Ethereum. Polygon’s low latency, high scalability, and low cost will enable seamless settlements of all USDT payments in the city – all important elements given the expected scale of crypto adoption in Lugano, he elaborated.

Lugano has already seen a widespread effort to bring cryptocurrency payments to the public sector. Its Citizens are already able to pay virtually all public services in crypto, including personal and municipal taxes, naturalization fees, access to public infrastructure, and document issuance fees.

Private sector is expecting the same level widespread adoption. According to Poretti, over 200 businesses have already installed the infrastructure necessary to accept payments in BTC, USDT, and LVGA. Over 5,000 citizens of Lugano made payments to these businesses in the city’s LVGA payment token and have been interacting with the digital wallet on a daily basis, in the past month.

Lugano seems to have planned the move to crypto adoption exceptionally well.

The Swiss city, with only 60,000 residents, will likely see a massive shortage of labor, if it manages to attract even a fraction of the planned startups to relocate to the city. Ardoino discussed this point, saying that Tether and Bitfinex have already begun working with Lugano’s three major universities to promote blockchain and crypto-focused education. The two companies are working with academics to establish curriculums that will help the universities produce an educated workforce that’s well-versed in blockchain technology. Ardoino also said that the companies have set aside funds for 500 scholarships that will be granted to students focusing on blockchain and crypto technologies. Ardoino explained: