In 2022, thousands of Bitcoin and crypto enthusiasts gathered in the small quiet Swiss town of Lugano, outside a Mcdonalds restaurant.

But why were all these European crypto enthusiasts so excited to trade in their satoshis for Big Macs, McFlurrys and coffee?

Pioneers of the Lightning Network In Switzerland

A one-minute video was posted on X, capturing the historical moment of a customer ordering his food at a McDonald's digital kiosk and completing the payment at the register using a mobile app.

During the interaction, viewers could also see the Tether(USDT) logo appearing alongside the Bitcoin symbol on the credit cash machine.

In March 2022, the city announced to the world that it would be recognizing Bitcoin, Ether, and the LVGA token as legal tender.

In fact, these crypto enthusiasts were the pioneers who were the first people to test out the Lightning Network, a layer-2 technology built atop Bitcoin.

But more importantly, what they were doing was the epitome of Satoshi Nakamoto's utopia, a world where government fiat was replaced with a decentralised electronic cash system.

Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino revealed during an interview with Cointelegraph that his team took an entire week to teach all the Mcdonalds employees in that particular outlet on how to accept crypto. He added that the whole process was very time consuming because of the sheer number of employees that were working there.

The "Plan B" initiative

Lugano’s crypto-friendly policies stem from its “Plan B” initiative, launched on March 3, 2022, through a memorandum of understanding with Tether Operations Limited. The whole motive of this initiative is to ease the integration of crypto adoption for the town, in a way that is both meaningful and practical.

Ardoino explained that over the past few months, the Plan B team has onboarded over 60 merchants to accept crypto, but growth in merchants and crypto payment is really starting to ramp up

"Basically, it took us 30 merchants to reach the first 600 transactions. But in just the last five days alone, we had 600."

Moving forward, the team at Plan B hopes to expand the number of merchants who accept crypto to 1,000.

In order to do that, Tether has established two funds: a $106 million (100 million CHF) investment pool for crypto startups and a $3 million (3 million CHF) fund to drive cryptocurrency adoption among local businesses.

Through these funds, Teter hopes to spread the adoption of crypto to beyond just businesses and merchants to all the other aspects of resident's life, from payment tickets, public services and tuition fees for students.

Partnership with a private company to support residents

Of course Switzerland is not the first country to have the idea of making a crypto friendly city; just one year ago, in September 2021, El Salvador became the first country to recognize Bitcoin as a legal tender.

Similarly, all 19 McDoanlds outlets in the country accept Bitcoin payments. But that is where the similarity ends.

Unlike El Salvador, that takes a top-down approach to Bitcoin, in which the president announced Bitcoin as legal tender and where there was reportedly little hands-on educational assistance for people on the ground, the Plan B team works together with the private companies like Tether and GoCrypto to support this entire initiative.

Indeed, Tether and Plan B are working together to create the resources to guide merchants through the crypto onboarding process. Plus, they are able to receive feedback from merchants and update their systems accordingly.

Furthermore, it also seems that the people in Switzerland are also more receptive towards crypto payments. Ardoino revealed to Cointelegraph that so far, not a single merchant has rejected the opportunity to accept crypto.

This is a stark contrast to crypto merchant adoption in other parts of Europe, like the United Kingdom, for example.

In that sense alone, Ardoino claims that alone is already a success for the Plan B project. But the team will still continue to work hard to cast a wider net and continue to advocate for wider crypto adoption in the country.