3 March 2026 – Tether, in collaboration with the City of Lugano, today announced the launch of Plan ₿ Phase II (2026–2030), expanding the initiative first introduced in March 2022 into a broader strategy focused on digital infrastructure, resilience, and long-term technological autonomy.

What began as a controlled urban experiment integrating Bitcoin and stablecoin payments into municipal life is now evolving into a structural program aimed at strengthening Lugano’s position as a global operator for digital infrastructure.

Over the past four years, Tether, in partnership with the City, has driven measurable, structural outcomes through Plan ₿, reinforcing both the city’s economy and its international positioning. Today, more than 400 local merchants accept BTC, USD₮, and LVGA, embedding digital assets into everyday commerce and demonstrating real-world payment adoption. With Tether’s strategic and technical support, Lugano has also introduced digital bond issuance and enabled select municipal payments in digital assets, integrating blockchain directly into public finance infrastructure rather than limiting it to private sector use.

Tether and the City jointly established PoW.space, a physical hub designed to anchor peer-to-peer and blockchain innovation locally. Backed by Tether’s global network and ecosystem relationships, PoW.space has helped attract more than 100 fintech and blockchain companies to the region, strengthening Lugano’s role as a gateway between traditional finance and decentralized infrastructure.

Together, they also launched the Plan ₿ Forum, which began as a focused Bitcoin conference and has evolved into an international gathering drawing more than 4,000 participants from over 60 countries. With Tether’s involvement, the Forum has become a global platform for dialogue on digital assets, financial sovereignty, and resilient infrastructure.

Alongside ecosystem growth, Tether has supported university partnerships and applied training initiatives centered on decentralized finance, distributed systems, and blockchain technologies. These programs ensure that talent development advances in parallel with infrastructure expansion, positioning Lugano not only as a place where digital assets are used, but where the next generation of builders is trained.

Throughout this period, the City maintained full public governance, assumed no structural public finance risk, and operated through incremental pilot projects subject to evaluation and regulatory compliance. With Phase II, Lugano moves beyond symbolic experimentation and toward infrastructural consolidation.

The 2026 to 2030 strategy is structured around five interconnected pillars designed with infrastructure support from Tether to move Lugano from experimentation to long-term digital sovereignty. These include building institutional infrastructure for secure digital asset and automated system management, developing Lugano as a hub for digital trade and commodity processes, advancing sovereign and privacy-preserving digital identity systems, fostering local artificial intelligence ecosystems and autonomous digital agents, and implementing distributed, modular, and resilient urban digital infrastructure capable of supporting a new generation of decentralized economic activity.

The objective is not just the adoption of emerging technologies, but strategic positioning within the evolving global digital infrastructure landscape. As cloud services, payment systems, and artificial intelligence increasingly concentrate within a small number of global actors, cities face growing exposure to technological dependency and cyber risk.  Through its partnership with Tether, Lugano approaches digital transformation as a matter of governance, sovereignty, and operational continuity. 

The renewed Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Lugano and Tether provides for an indicative contribution of up to CHF 5 million over the 2026–2030 period, primarily in the form of expertise, infrastructure development, applied research, and training. Governance authority remains fully with the City, and individual initiatives will be governed through separate implementation agreements.

“Over the past four years, Lugano has shown that public institutions can engage with emerging technologies pragmatically while maintaining oversight,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “ Phase II focuses on infrastructure, resilience, and local capacity building. The ambition is to support Lugano in becoming a globally relevant digital infrastructure hub, while preserving public governance and autonomy.”

“Four years ago, Lugano chose to lead rather than wait. We demonstrated that innovation and institutional responsibility can coexist. With Plan ₿ | Phase II, we are investing in open and resilient civic digital infrastructure, because by 2030, a city’s freedom will increasingly be measured by its ability to govern its data and essential services without critical dependencies, with public governance safeguarding the collective interest,” said Michele Foletti, Mayor of Lugano.

From 2022 to 2030, Plan ₿ will move from cultural activation to systemic infrastructure. In an era where digital systems increasingly define economic and civic life, Lugano is positioning itself not merely as an adopter of innovation, but as a city actively shaping the governance and architecture of the digital infrastructure era. 

About Plan ₿

Lugano’s Plan ₿ is a joint initiative between the City of Lugano and Tether to accelerate the use of and leverage bitcoin technology as the foundation to transform the city’s financial infrastructure.

The plan will scale blockchain and Bitcoin throughout the city to positively impact all facets of daily life for the residents of Lugano. From small transactions with local merchants to larger efforts – such as paying annual taxes – blockchain will serve as the foundation for the city’s financial exchanges.