Bitcoin Forum

Take the title with a grain or two of salt

Source :
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/03/swiss-city-of-lugano-to-make-bitcoin-and-tether-de-facto-legal-tender/
and..
https://cointelegraph.com/news/swiss-city-of-lugano-to-pay-taxes-in-crypto-via-tether-partnership

The title of the original piece of news is a bit worse than mine for a bitcoin maximalist:

Swiss City of Lugano to Make Bitcoin and Tether 'De Facto' Legal Tender
It includes tether and it says "de facto" which means it will work like but without a legal base, which would be "de jure".

The second article claims that is only for tax purposes with further aim at actually becoming full-fledged legal tender:


Of course, it's still one huge step forward but probably we'll have to wait for the enthusiasm to clear and see what's the real deal when it comes to the actual laws that will be signed on paper. As for the impact, I would have thought that this will be the piece of news that will propel us to over 50k but, again, that's why I don't daily trade, we're going down 4%

If it's true that it will be legal tender for tax purposes, it's very good news because that means that there will only be taxes on profits from it (and perhaps other taxes, but only whatever applies to fiat in Switzerland, so not taxation of transactions, for sure). While it's generally worse than a formal declaration of Bitcoin as legal tender, it's a significant step towards adoption, and it can encourage the usage of Bitcoin specifically as money, not as a form of investment. But in terms of the impact on the price, I don't think there will be any or would have been if the title were accurate.

Switzerland is a high ranked economy by GDP, and one of its city's being linked to bitcoin is a huge step in the direction of adoption.

This sort of news reinforces bitcoins utility as a currency and store of value and even though it may not have significant impact on the market value, it very well could impact how institutions and government see it, triggering more adoption.

I think many people are getting drawn into crypto-currency right now and I think more would get into it the more, lugano has made a wise choice one that would help their country in so many ways. Regardless I think this clash between Russia and Ukraine has also shown the strength of crypto-currency in times like This, you can have several government with their currency by crypto-currency is one with no government and builds a bridge between both countries, if any government aren't seeing the potentials of crypto right now then it's funny.

Yes thats how I read it too, first they propose to use is for tax purposes but there
is a clear willingness to adopt it fully as legal tender.

Its strange to me though that it is only a city and not the whole country, they must
be able to do that or else they wouldnt start the procedure of implementing it.

Also to note while Switzerland is in Europe it is not part of the EUROzone, just in case
some people start thinking this is going to be an EU thing.

Good news nonetheless.

Taken with a pinch of salt,  but excited about the news, more publicity for btc, using it for tax or legal tender all point to one simple fact, btc recognition.  Although am struggling to fully understand how they intend to use it for tax purposes, does that mean that taxpayers will have the option to pay with btc or how it will be done?

Guys, you forget to consider something, the article is about a city, not the whole country.
And as the article reminds us, there are already other cities in the country where citizens can pay their taxes with bitcoin. So this is not really exceptional news. Just one more city.

Since 2 years about, Switzerland has adjusted a number of its commercial and financial laws to give businesses a legal framework.
There was even a company that advertised BTC on buses or tramways. Old news, Payment service provider Worldline now allows its 85,000 corporate customers to accept purchases in bitcoin or ether (the crypto-currency of the Ethereum blockchain) (https://www.ictjournal.ch/news/2021-08-20/en-suisse-85000-commerces-de-plus-peuvent-proposer-les-paiements-en-bitcoin-ou-en). That doesn't mean there are 85,000 busonesses using it, but there is nothing stopping them.

I don't expect such news to have an impact on the price


There is no tax on transactions in Switzerland. There are taxes on profits but like in every market and like in most countries.



it's to pay the taxes, not to go to the supermarket

The canton of Zug in Switzerland allows their citizens to pay their taxes with Bitcoin since 2021

Here's one (https://decrypt.co/40725/swiss-canton-of-zug-to-accept-taxes-in-bitcoin-ethereum) of many sources.

Switzerland is probably already one of the most Bitcoin friendly places on earth, they're trying to create a "crypto valley" there.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-rail-bitcoin-idUSKCN12S1KR

Switzerland rail company allow to buy bitcoin from their vending machine... since 2016!
it's like 1000 bitcoin atm on the same country, the biggest number we have seen so far.
They are a pretty famous as crypto friendly country and Lugano city has just made another step on a mass adoption. Well done ;) Let's see the next step!

A very bad deal, actually. Fee is outrageous. It may be 20% if my memories are correct.

Back to the subject, I'm not sure it's possible, because Lugano is only a city. Zug is different, because it's a canton (a bit like a county in the US).

Bitcoin's "utility" as a currency remains very limited, we should be honest. Although there's the Lightning Network, there's very low support from exchanges and Bitcoin merchants/services.

I believe Bitcoin is on its path to another phase, a more important phase. It will be a discovery of its real nature of weakening socio-political, and financial strongholds established by the legacy banking system and big goverment.

Yes well, in my case it's not that I'm ecstatic about the news but we have a trickle of news like this in the right direction, which makes me think that we are like in the period 1996-2000 in the use of the Internet. It seems that this is going to continue little by little but steadily and that we are moving towards a massive adoption and use.

It is not only weird but also stupid to even consider Tether safe as a regular user, let alone make it legal tender at a city or country level. We all know that Tether is a highly risky altcoin and worst of all it is centralized and the central authority controlling it is not some regular developer group, it is a very shady company that has been under multiple investigations by authorities that could (I believe it definitely will) lead to shutting down the company and death of Tether.

This is really a feeling of concealment. If Switzerland is an entire country accepting bitcoin payments, then the current impact should be global, and now it is only a city. If the mayor of this city steps down, does it mean that the news announced will not be Does it count?

Suddenly I don't want to watch Switzerland's next performance, I feel so sad.
When Switzerland chose not to be neutral, the centralized financial system collapsed

The Swiss have always been ahead of the financial game in Europe, so if this really goes through it would be a good step forward. And I would argue that Switzerland has much more leverage in it's financial decisions than some bigger European players in a sense that this could prompt other Europe economis to reconsider it's views on crypto.

I didn't know about such high fees, but are you sure? Out of 500 francs ... do they charge 100 francs in commissions?
When the service was launched, the news was taken with great enthusiasm because it was not so easy to buy bitcoin with cash and the services, at least in Europe, could be counted on the fingers of one hand ...

Even in that case with Lugano city, at least in Italy, we have appreciated with the same enthusiasm this news, because is a sign of innovation and open-mindedness by this country.
In Italy we have a bank that allow to exchange bitcoin but we don't have such regulations/positive attitude towards bitcoin...during government meetings they talked about bitcoin in an unscrupulous way as if they really don't even know the minimum basics...

I would water down the media excitement after reading some pointers to the scope of the news. Despite the small Swizz city of Lugano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugano) being on the road to accepting bitcoin for payments of goods, services and tax, it does not seem to be as shinny as the headlines are pointing out.

A couple of things I’ve read on the matter, point to it bearing a rather delimited scope, and seemingly not native, but rather using a third party provider to service conversions to fiat (reading the article, it evens seems like a mandatory conversion, although I’m not 100% sure on that).

From the first below referenced link:
 

From the second below referenced link:

It reminds me more of the way some stores in certain towns/cities accept a local token for payments, than a concept of legal tender by far.

Ver:
https://cryptobriefing.com/lugano-introduces-bitcoin-tether-lvga-legal-tender/
https://blockzeit.com/the-switzerland-city-of-lugano-recognizes-bitcoin-and-tether-as-de-facto-legal-tender/

By the way, here you can watch the recording of the broadcast of the Lugano's Plan BTC conference in English, at which a cooperation agreement was signed between the mayor of Lugano Michele Foletti and CTO Tether Paolo Ardoino, also at the end it is mentioned about a store located not far from the conference venue where you can buy things for bitcoin or LVGA token, but it is rather of such an advertising nature.

English ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfh-oOlt03I
Italian  ver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaMSkwNdPfM

I knew from the start it wasn't as good as advertised.
But!, although I don't like opening topics about small things when 90%of the economic and speculation and bd boards are about Russia and sactions, 9% about Bukele's meme I desperately felt the need for something else!

Yeah, it's just a city, not even the biggest, it also accepts tether, reading the list of poeple involved I assume a lot of money was spent for this for a PR move or more a publicity stunt but it's still something nice to have and it's something else than the mainstream subjects now.
As I said, the impact was not what I was expected, I hoped it will keep the FOMO rocket going but in the end, it is what it is.

Oh, and of course, in order for this to be a leading example, poeple would have to actually use bitcoin for payments there, if other cities see that despite the legislation and favorable conditions nobody is doing they will see no reason to jump onboard.

In any case, this somehow brings optimism to the process of blockchain integration, and now Polygon announces that it has been selected as the official blockchain platform of the Swiss city of Lugano, to help in the development of blockchain infrastructure.

Source: https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1499493327502143488

Yes in the city of Lugano in southern Switzerland, many local businesses are planning to accept some cryptocurrencies as their "de facto" legal tender as part of a partnership with USDT.
So they don't just choose Polygons.
And they also said that the company had set aside 3 million Swiss francs.  Switzerland plans to work closely with Lugano officials to encourage the adoption of Bitcoin, USDT and LVGA tokens for shops and businesses across the city.

If they are successful in implementing this to their city, more than likely, other neighboring cities may probably follow. With small population, this will be easier to manage. And they can easily see how crypto will affect their financial system and the way of life of its people. So even if it is Polygon network, it is good to hear that they are trying to integrate blockchain technology in their system.

It appears that the city of Lugano wants to use the American dollar but only without depending on the American Federal Reserve's dollar printer hehehe. This is comedy. However, I certainly agree with you. This acceptance will only spread Tether's systemic risk from the cryptospace to also slowly go to traditional financial systems.

Never mind, bitcoin is more or less impacted by the war news rather than the sparks in green field. As far as war is concerned I am sure Russians and Ukrainians are pulling off the bitcoin market, so there is possibility we are loosing the value on that side. Anyways, its hard to state that but bitcoin has misbehaved multiple times since the war broke out.

Talking about the news, I am not sure why only taxes? 

Whats in the taxes that is not in the day today usage of the bitcoin? I mean if they wanna make it legal tender then hell go replenish the whole economic circle with the bitcoin use. Like that of EL Salvador. May be we can have up surge after that news.

The part that worries me a little, because it is like a double edge sword, is that more usage of centralized shitcoin that have a risk of disaster could lead to more negative FUD about bitcoin. Imagine if they accepted a shitcoin and their transaction was reversed, funds stolen, ledger modified, ... (because it is centralized) then they start spreading FUD about bitcoin by calling all cryptocurrencies risky and all transactions easily reversible.

I said it is a double edge sword because when the scam happens it could also point out that using the shitcoin lead to loss whereas they should have used bitcoin and nothing else which could help surge bitcoin adoption instead.

I guess we have to wait and see what the inevitable Tether demise would bring to bitcoin world.

They are testing the waters still and kind of balancing act whether IMF will do something against it. There is a chance that Swiss will go full on BTC if it's just a tap on the wrist. Just a slightly different path to take but they may be there too like El Salvador.  If there isn't so much rebuke, I guess it's a go signal.
Switzerland should have been the first to have adopted BTC because they are known for thier neutrality.

Even if there is still no law supporting this, this is still a big thing for Bitcoin adoption. Until clear official guidelines are released from the relevant authorities, this will be called by a lot of names. This may be considered by others as adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender, but once the law comes out, it might not be so. I think Bitcoin would only be treated as a currency but not necessarily as a legal tender. Regardless, this is still a big deal. More and more cities will definitely be accepting Bitcoin in the months and years to come.

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1499448245008883713/3L60wBIP?format=jpg&name=small
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/lugano-switzerland-will-make-bitcoin-legal-tender (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/lugano-switzerland-will-make-bitcoin-legal-tender)

it will be very exciting to observe the whole development in this city. in addition, the Bitcoin world forum is to take place in october this year :)

I'm always happy to see cryptocurrencies getting mainstream recognition and acceptance.
I am curious, why this city out of the other Swiss cities though? What factored into this decision?

Anything that has to do with the development of BTC in countries is definitely welcomed especially if we see that countries are starting to see its potential and widespread use.

In the event that Lugano does indeed accept BTC as a form of payment for taxes, then that will be the start of potential implementations in the future. Its development and use has to start somewhere- and they chose for the payment of taxes, which implies that the government recognizes its use and capability in their future transactions.

I just hope that countries would soon adopt and use this as an example in order to integrate cryptocurrencies in our day-to-day transactions.

I agree that this is a very strange decision of the city authorities, but obviously, the guys who pull the strings with Tether know their business, because they successfully use Bitcoin not only in this case but also in El Salvador (https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/02/26/el-salvador-bitcoin-tether-buys-itself-a-country-and-why-chivo-sucks/) when it comes to their Bitcoin City - it doesn't seem like a coincidence at all.

In addition, Lugano has announced its stablecoin (LVGA), so we wonder if Bitocin will be relevant at all, if we know that proponents of stablecoins will advocate for their projects because they are cleaner for the environment and cheaper for transactions. If you ask me, Bitcoin is used here only to promote some completely different projects, but time will best show in which direction the whole thing will go.

i was there, it was amazing.

El Salvator is a developing country, Lugano is the third financial center of Switzerland, there is a big difference.  They are planning to create the whole ecosystem to make bitcoin to succeed, not only by adopting it as a de facto legal tender but also by planning all of the interventions as per the list below. Do that in a big financial center like Lugano, and be sure that things are just going to explode for btc.

A summary:

Very well organized institutional event with a turnout of at least 600/700 people (after 2 years of restrictions I was no longer used to it). I have seen many people in the sector but also many new and curious faces.

Summary by points:
- Bitcoin, USDT and Luga (a local token pegged to the cent of a franc) will be legal tender in Lugano. For BTC it will use Lightning Network, for the other Polygon in order to minimize the impact of fees)

- you can pay taxes, buy things and services with BTC / USDT / LUGA (at the moment over 200 businesses have joined)

- 3 million francs have already been allocated to help local companies gear up to accept crypto

- 100 million will be allocated to attract crypto companies from abroad

- there will be 500 scholarships to train professional figures in the crypto world (dev, compliance, customer care)

- space will be created for 25 startups in the crypto world

- a mining project will start that will use electricity from 100% renewable sources

- on 26/27/28 October there will be a 3-day event in Lugano. The Bitcoin World Forum


Recording of the event (Eng/ita) : https://youtu.be/Zfh-oOlt03I (https://youtu.be/Zfh-oOlt03I)

Making bitcoin legal tender is a big thing to be done by centralized governments. El Salvador took a very strong decision against opposition from different organisations and countries. The credit goes to the president Nayib Bukele, because he was strong in his decision and when more leaders criticised his decision. Swiss City Laguna's plan for making bitcoin legal tender is not a big thing in my view, because Switzerland is already a crypto friendly country.

Which makes me believe there are benefits we don't yet see. Legalizing Tether gives me the impression that there are some really shady things going on.

It doesn't want to be dependent of the USD, but it wants USDT which is a stable coin of USD with an extra layer of centralization? Nope, that's definitely not the case.

So far this news has only been coming from the side of polygon? Are there any legit sources that they are making Bitcoin legal tender? The article points to the supposed plans of Lugano but nowhere does it say anything about Bitcoin becoming legal tender there. In fact, I very much doubt a single city can make that kind of decision by itself. The entire government would have to weigh in. In fact, thats where the first news would come from.

Nonetheless, I will keep an eye out on the development...

It is definitely a good news whenever bitcoin gets accepted in more places. It is obvious that we will rarely see any kind of change in the approach from other places just because of this, but it is not impossible neither. I believe this could have been even more promoted after the El Salvador deal.

I am not saying that they did it because El Salvador did it, but they were probably looking at doing it anyway, and then El Salvador doing it ended up being the key thing that they looked at and they saw that it helped them. Now this is probably a richer place than El Salvador, even if it is just a city, and I think they could do a lot better job.

For me, I think that’s a good thing for Lugano (a Swiss City) to embrace cryptocurrencies by making it as a legal tender and to introduce crypto taxes. But this is just the city alone, and not the entire country. Imagine if the whole country would do this instead of the city alone. It would be huge of course, just like in El Salvador.

But of course, there are some concerns such as the usage of Bitcoin. If they are going to use the Lightning Network, the transaction fees aren’t concerning at all.

So it will soon be possible to pay for purchases in shops in this city with bitcoin? That's certainly good news, especially from a developed country like Switzerland. The only thing I don't understand is whether it has anything to do with the Tether partnership. If I understand correctly, bitcoin will be converted into USDT which equals 1:1 to the dollar. Or does the bitcoin remain bitcoin and goes to the BTC address? If not, it's a tricky business for Tether.

Switzerland is a huge nation and they are in Europe as well, it would be difficult for them to accept something like that right away. I am not saying that they can't, or they won't because I believe that based on what happens, they may actually do it in the future. However, it is harder and more difficult to do it for a whole nation.

But, isn't that lovely? I mean when it was El Salvador they said that it was a small nation and ran by some corrupt person and attacked it endlessly. Now it is a Swiss city, lets see what they will say about it. I believe even Miami could do that soon, mayor is working hard to make it true but laws make it harder for him.

Yeah that is right. That is what legal tender do, to make use of bitcoin directly to buy goods without needing to convert to fiat or any other cryptocurrencies. It's a good news but the op is not convinced somehow for some reasons maybe because the statement is not only about using btc as a legal tender but there is some extra rule about it but they didn't say something about btc being converted to usdt by the time you made a payment.

Maybe they too make tether as a legal tender along with btc but if ever what you said is going to happen, it's not going to be a difficult thing since there are now lots of services that do the conversion job.

To answer both why I'm not really convinced it will be as some imagine.

First, you can already pay with bitcoins in shops in Europe, and in Switzerland alone, we have enough cases to date of businesses accepting bitcoin for payments, it's not a new thing, you don't have to declare it legal tender in order to achieve that.
Second, the definition of legal tender varies from country to country, you maybe have seen maybe those signs all over the US with "Cash only", so despite you having dollars on your credit/debit card and the dollar being obvious legal tender nobody is forced to accept them as means of payment, in Sweden, there are shops who are not taking cash anymore, in Salvador is completely different, merchants were forced to accept payments via Bitcoin so you couldn't refuse it.
And even in Salvador merchants can opt for the BTC to be converted directly in $,  so the whole debate about making it legal tender is useless until we see the applicable law, and we're talking here about a city, not a country. That's why I said it, take it with a grain of salt because it might not be what you wish for.

As all update on the matter:

https://planb.lugano.ch/

Here you can have details and updates on all the plan, initiatives and developments on the unfolding of Lugano Plan B.

I raised an eyebrow at the 10 000 merchants in a city of 65 000 population, but whatever one doesn't have to be based there I assume.
But they've lost me completely when I clicked on the "Work for Plan ₿" which leads to:
https://tether.recruitee.com/o/project-manager-luganos-plan
So this is a full scale tether operation making use of bitcoin's popularity.

Ok, good for you Foletti, back to Salvador! Quite funny, one of the few Italian words I know came to my mind while reading his name, follia.
And from that now I'm looking over the internet to see where I can get these "Forno Battistini Biscotti Froletti Integrali"  that ended up in my search results ;D

Well. Aren't the Swiss the traditional, secretive bankers for almost every single entity that has billions of worth of black money earned from questionable sources. On top of that, they have been pioneers in this. A "Swiss account" is synonymous with ill-gotten wealth of monarchs and political leaders for every single developing country in the world.

Tether has been questioned multiple times about the validity of it printing tether and buying crypto off of Bitfinex. This means that they have quite a lot of "fiat wealth" to be taken care of. It should come as no surprise if they choose a Swiss city for this purpose.

Overall though, this should be seen as a positive in terms of crypto and the part about use of Lightning Network.

Come on! This is marketing bbg material, you have to be a little bit bullish eh?

Regarding tether, I am sorry I cannot provide a translation for Ardoino’s chat with the guys at bip.com, but he mentioned the fact they are helping the city of Lugano with their initial setup, but they have no monopoly of the plan, so if other competitors want to join in the city will be happy to have more than one partner.

At least, in theory…

Fantastic,

this are running very well or Bitcoin in Lugano.

Site has been updated, looks like they are starting to work.

If we connect the two things, your statement is indeed rational, even many corrupt countries are the most loyal customers of Swiss banks, so with this new policy, whoever the partner is, it's actually the same, only now the partner is Tether.  Hopefully the project goes smoothly so that BTC continues to experience recovery to reach its ath moment.

There were some state in the US that has also made the same purpose for bitcoin, to be used as payment for tax purposes.

People are always thinking about the recovery of bitcoin from where it came from on its former ATH. Looking on it at the moment is lovely as it's moving up gradually and not dropping surprisingly.