At a McDonald's next to a lake surrounded by mountains, in the center of the Swiss city of Lugano, a customer orders a coffee.
"Can I pay with bitcoin?" he asks, and the person behind the counter offers him what looks like a credit card payment terminal.
It is actually a cryptocurrency payment machine.
The equipment has been distributed free of charge to local retail businesses by the city council.
The buyer pays contactlessly, from the bitcoin wallet on their mobile phone.
The bill is 0.00008629, which is approximately $8.80 (about 7.60 euros).
Few people who have bought bitcoin would probably consider using it to buy real things in stores.
Instead, it is generally seen as an investment, a bet on its value increasing.
But in Lugano, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, it's a different story.
While you can of course still pay for everything in Swiss francs, around 350 shops and restaurants now also accept bitcoin, reports Telegraph.
The local authority has even started accepting cryptocurrency payments for municipal services.
For example, you can pay for preschool childcare in bitcoin.
And one of the payers is McDonald's customer Nicolas, who comes from France.
He is what you might call a “true bitcoin believer.”
"What's great about paying in bitcoin is the sense of freedom it gives you," he says. "You're no longer dependent on a financial system with its intermediaries and costs."
And if you walk through the center of Lugano, down a main street where almost all the shops sell luxury things.
Mostly jewelry or expensive clothes.
At a store called Vintage Nassa that sells new and second-hand handbags and watches, owner Cherubino Fry says he accepts bitcoin because the processing fee he has to pay per transaction is less than those charged by credit card companies.
For bitcoin it is generally under 1%, while for debit cards it can be up to 1.7% and up to 3.4% for credit cards.
Although for the last two it may vary from one country to another.
Asked if he does much business with bitcoin, he says: "Actually, not much. At the moment, just sporadically, just a few clients." "But the use of bitcoin will be like a tree that grows, and this tree will grow very big in five, ten years."
Very close to Mr. Fry's shop, there is an initiative launched in 2022 by the City of Lugano in collaboration with the cryptocurrency platform Tether.
With the B standing for bitcoin, its stated goal is to educate people about the cryptocurrency and "make Lugano the European hub for bitcoin."
However, elsewhere, projects similar to Lugano's have failed.
In 2021, El Salvador made bitcoin a legal tender alongside the US dollar.
To encourage its use, the government gave people the equivalent of $30 worth of bitcoin who downloaded it via an app.
"So what people did was download the app, exchange the bitcoin for dollars and never use it again," says Vincent Charles, head of cryptocurrency firm Unchain Data.
He went to El Salvador earlier this year to see how bitcoin adoption was going and concluded that people don't really use it, and retailers and service providers rarely accept it.
However, there are other successful examples of bitcoin adoption from around the world.
The Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, was named the most cryptocurrency-friendly city in the world in a report in April, followed by Hong Kong and Zurich.
However, in Lugano, not everyone seems to be impressed by bitcoin.
In a park on the shore of a lake, there once stood a statue representing Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the unknown person or persons who claim to have invented the cryptocurrency in 2008.
In August, vandals broke the sculpture into pieces and threw it into Lake Lugano.
"It's interesting because not many things get vandalized around here," says Lucia, a passerby who lives in the city. "People are usually pretty well behaved. And you don't often see people who have very strong political opinions."
However, she adds that she herself is skeptical of cryptocurrencies in general.
"At the University of Lugano where I study, there is a club to promote bitcoin and everything else. I find it surprising that institutions such as my university would promote cryptocurrencies so much. I think they are linked to crime, the dark web and speculation."
"A lot of people lose their money because they invest in a cryptocurrency and then it crashes."
Sergio Rossi is a professor of economics at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
He says bitcoin is a risk for shopkeepers in Lugano or elsewhere because of its volatility - its value can rise and fall sharply.
So, according to him, it is important that they immediately convert the bitcoin they receive into Swiss francs, euros or another currency issued by a government or central bank.
He adds: "There is also a reputational risk with those cryptocurrencies used in illegal transactions, which could affect the city of Lugano and its financial institutions."
Professor Rossi also warns that people's bitcoin is held by a digital third party, which makes it risky.
"If the registrant fails or goes bankrupt, my cryptocurrencies disappear immediately."
"And therefore, I lose the corresponding amount forever. In contrast, in Switzerland, all bank deposits are guaranteed up to the amount of 100,000 Swiss francs ($125,000). This means that if the bank where my savings are registered goes bankrupt, I can recover them up to this amount." /Telegrafi/
