Lugano launched Plan ₿ for crypto-funded taxes and city payments

Lugano and Tether Operations Limited launched Plan ₿ on March 3, 2022, signing a memorandum of understanding intended to turn the Swiss city into a European center for Bitcoin and blockchain use. The municipal plan aimed to let residents and companies fund annual taxes and public-service payments with bitcoin, Tether’s USD₮ and approved Swiss-franc stablecoins.

The legal and operational distinction was essential. Switzerland’s sovereign currency remained the Swiss franc. Lugano’s announcement said service providers would convert accepted digital assets into local fiat currency. The city was therefore planning a crypto payment channel, not replacing the franc or giving cryptocurrency national legal-tender status.

That still made the agreement institutionally significant on March 3. Rather than limiting blockchain policy to research or startup promotion, a municipal government was proposing to connect digital assets to routine civic obligations and local commerce.

What Plan ₿ committed to build

The March 3 records describe a program, not a finished payments network. Lugano and Tether said they would work with service providers to integrate payment infrastructure for local businesses. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network was identified as one of the intended payment solutions. The announcement did not identify every provider, publish a launch schedule for each service, or explain fees, exchange-rate timing, refunds and failed-payment handling.

The partnership extended beyond payments. Its primary announcement proposed a centrally located hub for blockchain companies and startups, a crypto-industry-led fund for regional blockchain businesses, collaboration with local universities and research institutes, and 500 scholarships to be made available. It also said the partners would examine environmentally friendlier energy sources for bitcoin mining.

At the March 3 presentation, Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino described an adoption fund of 3 million Swiss francs for shops and businesses. Contemporaneous reporting also described a startup fund of up to 100 million Swiss francs. Those figures were announced commitments, not evidence that either amount had been fully deployed on March 3. The primary written release characterized the startup vehicle only as a multi-million-dollar fund and did not publish term sheets, beneficiaries or a disbursement timetable.

“De facto” was not statutory legal tender

Coverage frequently called bitcoin, USD₮ and Lugano’s LVGA token “de facto legal tender.” That phrase described the intended breadth of practical acceptance inside the city. It should not be confused with a change to Swiss monetary law.

The difference also shaped who carried market and settlement risk. If a taxpayer initiated a payment in bitcoin and an intermediary converted it before the city received francs, the municipality did not necessarily retain bitcoin on its balance sheet. Yet the design still depended on custody, conversion liquidity, compliance screening, technical uptime and the contractual obligations of private providers. Those details were unresolved in the public March 3 documents.

LVGA also belonged to a different category from bitcoin and dollar-linked USD₮. Lugano had already used LVGA Points through its MyLugano local loyalty and payment program. Grouping the three assets under one adoption banner did not make their issuers, price behavior, networks or legal treatment identical.

Why the date mattered

Plan ₿ placed a private stablecoin issuer inside a municipal infrastructure experiment and paired that relationship with Bitcoin payments, startup finance and education. For Tether, it offered a city-scale demonstration. For Lugano, it promised investment and payment innovation while introducing dependence on digital-asset companies and conversion providers.

No event-day evidence establishes that Plan ₿ affected bitcoin or USD₮ prices, so this reconstruction makes no market-return claim. The verified development was the signed framework and announced implementation agenda; adoption, usage and public cost still required later evidence.

Later context

On December 5, 2023, Swiss public-service reporting said Lugano had expanded bitcoin and USD₮ payment capability to all municipal invoices, including taxes. That later implementation helps evaluate the March 3 plan, but it was not knowable on March 3, 2022 and is not used to portray the original announcement as already complete.