Summary of the third edition of the Plan B Forum, the event promoted and organized by PlanB and the Lugano municipality
On Saturday October 26th, the third edition of the Plan B Forum concluded in the city of Lugano.
The event saw the participation of approximately 2,700 people. Among the conference protagonists were Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, Nick Szabo, renowned cypherpunk, Giacomo Zucco, director of Plan B Network, and Peter Todd, Bitcoin developer.
The presentations were divided across four different stages: the main WAGMI Stage and the secondary stages P2P Stage, UTXO room, and Hal Finney room. The conference also included a free Italian stage called Spazio21, dedicated to exploring topics such as self-custody, nodes, mining, transactions, and Lightning Network through practical workshops.
Multiple themes were discussed during the conference: from possible future protocol updates to Bitcoin as a tool for freedom, covering the success of ETFs launched in January and addressing privacy protection methods in daily Bitcoin usage.
The event was opened by Lugano’s mayor Michele Foletti, who illustrated updates on the initiative launched two years ago, explaining how approximately 350 shops now accept payments in Bitcoin, Tether, and LVGA, the city’s stablecoin pegged to the Swiss franc. Regarding the use of bitcoins received from tax payments or services by the city of Lugano, Foletti stated:
“Current Law doesn’t allow us to hold bitcoin. We hope for a change in Law to create a bitcoin treasury.”
Among the most interesting panels was The Covenants Dilemma, featuring Paolo Ardoino, Giacomo Zucco, Samson Mow, Paul Faecks, and Marco Argentieri. During the discussion, the five speakers debated various covenants under study and their possible implications for the protocol. The conclusion that can be drawn from the interventions is that covenant activation seems to find consensus among the five protagonists, considering the improvements they could unlock in terms of scalability and use cases; it remains to be understood which proposal is the best to implement.
Following this was the debate Use of Bitcoin Blockspace, which included Luke Dashjr and Bitcoin Mechanic against Peter Todd and Pete Rizzo, moderated by Stephan Livera. The discussion addressed what constitutes legitimate use of timechain block space.
On one side, Luke Dashjr and Bitcoin Mechanic, opposing tools such as Inscription, Rune, BRC-20, maintained a more rigid vision, labeling transactions that deviate from purely monetary use as “spam.” On the other side, Peter Todd and Pete Rizzo proposed a more flexible vision, believing that any transaction that pays fees should be mined and considered legitimate.
During Saturday’s session, in the course of the Unstoppable TogETHER keynote, Paolo Ardoino announced that Tether owns 82,454 BTC and 48.3 tons of gold, in addition to more than $100 billion in US Treasury bonds.
There was also space for discussing Bitcoin’s use in defending human rights. During the panel What it took to free Julian!, Julian Assange’s wife Stella, along with his father John Shipton and stepbrother Gabriel Shipton, revealed that the battle for his freedom has required over $30 million. The stepbrother highlighted how financial support came primarily from about 10,000 bitcoiners.
The Bitcoin Privacy panel moderated by Ben Perrin, host of the BTC Sessions YouTube channel, featuring Peter Todd, Seth For Privacy, and Hodlonaut, offered a comprehensive overview of the most suitable privacy solutions and techniques to protect one’s identity while using Bitcoin. Purchasing bitcoin without KYC, using a full-node, and using the Lightning Network emerged as the primary methods to minimize personal information exposure.
