There's a Swiss city where you can get by almost entirely on Bitcoin.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

The picturesque Swiss lakeside town of Lugano is positioning itself as Europe's Bitcoin capital.

In 2022, the city launched Plan B, aiming to attract crypto companies and Bitcoin currency itself to the city.

You can still pay for everything in Swiss francs, of course,

but in hundreds of shops and restaurants, you can also pay in Bitcoin.

The city has even started accepting it to pay for municipal services.

The BBC's John Lawrensen went to check it out.

In a McDonald's by the lake, in the centre of Lugano, a customer orders coffee.

The salesperson holds up what looks like a credit card payment terminal, but which is in fact

a special crypto one distributed free to businesses by the town council.

The customer pays contact lists from the Bitcoin wallet on his telephone.

0.000-0-0629 Bitcoin, it comes to.

A figure constantly changing because of the currency's notorious volatility.

Bitcoin. this purely digital currency that uses encryption to control, manage and issue units

as opposed to so-called fiat money used by central banks or governments.

People often buy it as an investment, a gamble, in other words, on its value

going up, as opposed to down, as it has quite a lot recently. But how many even think about

using it to buy actual things like a diamond ring or a pizza? Well, in Lugano, it's different.

I want to talk about an experiment I did. This July,

I have a problem with my bank. I had to live in Bitcoin only for 11 days.

Mia Liponi runs the Plan B hub, a meeting place for people who work in the Bitcoin sector.

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