What Plan ₿ has done for Lugano's financial centre
Visibility
The clearest effect of Plan ₿ is visibility. Already in March 2023 the Municipio reported that the programme had produced worldwide media coverage and an effect on the city's image that exceeded its expectations.1 Before 2022, Lugano was known internationally, if at all, as a private banking centre for Italian clients whose traditional business had been destroyed by tax transparency. Since 2022 it has also been known, in a global community of Bitcoin advocates, investors and developers, as the city that adopted bitcoin. The forum brings several thousand visitors a year, the statue has become a destination for photographs, and the city's name appears in the conference programmes and media of the sector around the world. For a city of fewer than 70,000 inhabitants, this recognition was obtained at a very low direct cost to the municipal budget, since Tether has borne most of the expenses. Visibility in one community differs from standing in the financial industry as a whole. The international banks, insurers and asset managers that decide where to place staff and capital pay little attention to Bitcoin conferences, and the association with Tether may deter as many institutional actors as it attracts. The forum's programme, with its emphasis on bitcoin as an instrument of financial freedom and on nation-state adoption, addresses a public that is often critical of the existing financial system. The brand created by Plan ₿ is therefore strong among those who share that view and weaker, or ambiguous, among the institutions that make up most of Lugano's financial centre.
Companies, jobs and measurable results
The promoters report that more than 100 fintech and blockchain companies have established themselves in Lugano and that more than 400 merchants can accept LVGA, bitcoin and USDT.2 These figures are not accompanied by data on employment, turnover, tax revenue, licences or the size of the companies. A company that registers a branch or a small subsidiary in Lugano counts as much as one that moves a team of fifty developers. The payment system for municipal invoices, the most innovative element in legal terms, has produced no published volume figures. The memorandum of 2026 provides for key performance indicators and for the measurement of public benefit, which offers an opportunity to fill this gap.3
The point matters because the claims made for the programme are economic claims. If Plan ₿ is to be judged as a measure of economic promotion, its effects must be measurable: jobs created in the city, tax revenue from the companies attracted, rents paid, students trained and employed. The comparison with Zug is instructive. The Crypto Valley Association and its partners publish an annual census of companies, employees and valuations in the Swiss and Liechtenstein blockchain sector, which allows trends to be followed over time.4 Lugano has no comparable data series of its own. Until it does, the economic effect of Plan ₿ cannot be separated from the general growth of the sector, from the effects of Ticino's other location factors and from the companies that would have come to Lugano anyway.
Notes
- laRegione, "Spiegato il protocollo d'intesa" (above). ↩
- laRegione, "Lugano, il Plan ₿ entra nella seconda fase" (above); "Lugano's Plan ₿ ", Tio.ch (above). ↩
- Memorandum of Understanding … Phase II (above). ↩
- CV VC and Crypto Valley Association, CV VC Top 50 Report, annual editions. ↩
For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.