The 2022 Plan ₿ Forum brought tawk.to executive teams together with pioneers and progressive political figures to share ideas and knowledge about the present and future of the token economy.
Speakers included Paolo Ardoina (CTO, Tether and Bitfinex), Adam Back (CEO, Blockstream), Jameson Lopp (CTO, Casa) and others.
Here are our takeaways from the event.
The future of currency
Nestled in the western Alps of Ticino, Switzerland, Lugano is paving a new path to the future of currency. Plan B, a collaboration between the city and Tether, is putting cryptocurrency on track to becoming legal tender that can be used as easily as any other local currency.
Lugano’s early adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) through the city-led initiative includes 300 merchants and 8000 wallets from their population of 70,000 citizens.
Commercial, financial, and educational partners executed the pilot project in March, deploying Web3 technologies to enable BTC transactions via the payment infrastructure developed by GoCrypto.
An investment pool will support startups developing blockchain technology. Funding will be available to assist businesses who want to link their payment systems to Bitcoin, Tether, and LVGA, a payment token proper to Lugano and powered by blockchain. University partnerships will provide training for new, blockchain-related roles.
What is Web3?
“The Web3 (r)evolution is fuelled by the demands for personal digital privacy and transparency throughout the Internet,” says Andrew Graham, Chief Revenue Officer at tawk.to.
– In 1991, Web 1.0 allowed public access to worldwide open information-sharing.
– In 2004, Web 2.0 saw the evolution of “read-only” internet into a socially-driven model. Traffic and interaction came to be monitored and controlled by a relatively small group of actors.
– Web 3.0 puts power back into the hands of the individual. The term, coined by Ethereum cofounder and Gavin Wood in 2014, is defined by the Web3 foundation as “a decentralized and fair internet where users control their own data, identity and destiny.”
In the new model, distributed ownership, equal access, and built-in incentives remove the need for communication oversight by trusted authorities.
Where are we in the journey to adoption?
“Most Web3 technologies are still evolving and developing new ways of existing amidst the current regulatory environment,” notes Graham.
“Early adopters are integrating powerful systems that support the Bitcoin movement and enable customers to pay with cryptocurrencies. There is a strong and financially researched belief that BTW will become the crypto version of gold, reaching a market cap value of six trillion by 2030.”
Technology activists are among the leaders and pioneers in the crypto space and have found new levels of success in supporting the economic needs of emerging countries. El Salvador adopted Bitcoin in 2021 as their primary currency with the Central African Republic (CAR) following in 2022.
Graham concludes, “The Plan B Forum was an educational and informative executive exercise to keep the company’s leadership at the leading edge of the Web3 evolution.”
Meet us in your city: View upcoming meetups and events.
