Plan B Forum 2022, Lugano, Switzerland

The Plan B conference was held in Lugano, the Italian-speaking centre of the Swiss canton of Ticino, from 28 to 29 October 2022. The name of the conference comes from the vision of the Municipality of Lugano to develop an open environment towards cryptocurrencies, in particular Bitcoin. Their crypto strategy aims to develop a critical infrastructure for cryptocurrency payments such as Bitcoin and Tether.

Members of the Bitcoin Society of Slovenia attended the conference to meet the people and projects involved in Plan B and to find out about the latest developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

On Friday 28 October 2022, the conference started with the Mayor’s address and the presentation of the Plan B strategy, followed by various panels on Bitcoin on the main stage.

They also announced the purchase of an office building in the centre of Lugano, which will be dedicated to both companies and individuals wishing to participate in Plan B. It will house Bitfinex, Utrust and Eligma Labs, among others, who were also the main sponsors of the conference.

We were also able to witness a conversation with Julian Assange’s family, in which his wife, brother and father spoke about Julian’s illegal and criminal detention and his psychological torture, and urged us to call on the authorities to release him. Participants also had the opportunity to watch a new documentary entitled Ithaka.

Stephan Livera moderated a panel on the impact of regulation on open-source software, and Giacomo Zucco was among the well-known panellists .

There were many more interesting panels, but the most memorable was Jimmy Song’s speech on how the fiat system is destroying the world and how altcoins are not a solution to anything.

Parallel to the panels on the main stage, various ecosystem specialists gave talks in side rooms, including cypherpunk Nick Szabo, who spoke about the “prehistory” of Bitcoin.

In addition to the interesting panels, the conference also served as a networking and networking event, with a dedicated peer-to-peer room where participants could arrange meetings with other members of the community via the Brella app.

In the evening, a dinner with entertainment for VIP participants concluded the first day of the conference.

On Saturday 29 October, the conference started with an opening address by the crypto couple Carla and Walker.

One of the most high-profile panels was the infamous Max Keiser, whose energetic talk on time and space created a lively atmosphere at the conference.

After lunch, a speech by cypherpunk Adam Back, known as the inventor of Hashcash and CEO of Blockstream, a leading developer of blockchain technology. He was talking about bitcoin loans.

Dejan Roljič, CEO of Eligma, which has set up an infrastructure of POS terminals for crypto payments across Lugano, participated in a panel on cryptocurrency payments for sale. He announced his departure for El Salvador, where the existing Chivo infrastructure will be replaced by Slovenian software.

The panel on the origins of cypherpunks and their future, moderated by Jimmy Song, was also very interesting. The panel included Paolo Ardoino, Adam Back and Nick Szabo.

Adam Back also appeared on a panel on how bitcoin mining is boosting renewable energy development, moderated by Natalie Brunell, host of the Coin Stories podcast.

The last event on the main stage was a presentation of the Bitkit platform by John Carvalho from Synonym. Their vision is based on the belief that bitcoin has already “won” and they have therefore developed a platform that makes it very easy for users to interact with both bitcoin and the lightning network. They want to create an environment in which every individual, even if completely unfamiliar with digital technology, can use bitcoin for everyday payments, storage and communication with others. Conference attendees also received early access to a beta version of the app, which could be a very important step in spreading bitcoin around the world.

For an unforgettable end of the conference in Lugano, in addition to a VIP dinner and entertainment with DJ Gabry Ponte, there was also a Poker Tournament and a show with Droni. The latter conjured up a magical atmosphere with a “musical” soundtrack of clips from Michael Saylor’s famous “There is no second best” speech .