John Lawrenson

In a McDonald's by the lake in the centre of Lugano, a customer orders coffee.

The salesperson holds up what looks like a credit card payment terminal, but which is in fact a special crypto one distributed free to businesses by the town council.

The customer pays contactless from the Bitcoin wallet on his telephone.

0.00008629 Bitcoin it comes to.

A figure constantly changing because of the currency's notorious volatility.

Bitcoin, this purely digital currency that uses encryption to control, manage and issue units, as opposed to so-called fiat money used by central banks or governments.

People often buy it as an investment, a gamble, in other words, on its value going up, as opposed to down, as it has quite a lot recently.

But how many even think about using it to buy actual things like a diamond ring or a pizza?

Well, in Lugano, it's different.

Mia Liponi runs the Plan B Hub, a meeting place for people who work in the Bitcoin sector.

Although you can pay for municipal services.

If you get a parking fine, you can pay it in Bitcoin.

Which is probably not why Bitcoin enthusiasts move to this town, but still.

I wander along the lakefront and into a park where there's a square block of metal, a plinth, upon which stood a statue of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious person who brought Bitcoin into being in 2009.

Playing on the mystery, the statue, made of slats of metal, is transparent when you look at it from the front.

And it is now completely invisible because this summer some equally anonymous individual or individuals unscrewed it, broke it into bits and threw it in the lake.

Not everyone here, it seems, is keen on crypto.

In front of the empty plinth I get talking to a few passers-by like Lucia.

This is a quiet place.

I asked the mayor, Michele Folletti, if he is concerned that Lugano will become a mafia magnet.