[Tether and the City of Lugano to Invest 5 Million Swiss Francs to Advance Phase 2 of Plan ₿, Establishing a Global Digital Infrastructure Hub] BlockBeats News, March 3: Over the past four years, Tether has collaborated with the City of Lugano to promote Plan ₿, enabling more than 400 local merchants to accept BTC and USDT payments, integrating digital assets into daily commerce, and popularizing real-world payments. With Tether's strategic and technical support, Lugano has also introduced digital bond issuance and supported the use of certain municipal digital asset payments, directly integrating blockchain into public financial infrastructure rather than limiting it to private sector use. Tether and the City of Lugano have jointly committed to investing 5 million Swiss Francs to advance the second phase of Plan ₿, positioning Lugano as a global hub for digital infrastructure. From 2026 to 2030, Tether will provide infrastructure support to empower Lugano with long-term digital sovereignty. Measures include building secure automated management infrastructure for digital assets, developing Lugano into a hub for digital trade and commodity flows, advancing a digital identity system that prioritizes sovereignty and privacy protection, fostering a local AI ecosystem and autonomous digital agents, and implementing distributed, modular, and resilient urban digital infrastructure to support the next generation of DeFi activities.