Original Article Title: "Satoshi Nakamoto Statue Sinks to the Bottom of the Lake, Anxiety in the 'Crypto Valley' Rises"

Original Article Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

On the morning of August 3, in Lugano, Switzerland, municipal workers retrieved several stainless steel fragments from the lake.

Just a few hours earlier, these fragments were part of a complete Satoshi Nakamoto statue. An homage to the creator of Bitcoin by a city has now become scrap metal at the bottom of the lake.

Twitter user @Grittoshi was the first to notice the statue's disappearance. He recalled that on the evening of August 1, Swiss National Day, the statue was still standing in Parco Ciani Park. Nearby at an open-air café, young people were raising their glasses in celebration.

Several hours later, this artwork, which took 21 months to design and was said to "disappear" when viewed from the front, had indeed disappeared—in a way that no one had anticipated.

Satoshigallery, an art group dedicated to erecting Satoshi Nakamoto statues in 21 cities worldwide, quickly offered a reward of 0.1 bitcoin to find clues.

However, the solution to the case turned out to be surprisingly simple.

It was still @Grittoshi, who used "Occam's Razor" to reason: revelers on the National Day night might have impulsively decided to have some "fun" with the statue as they passed by. They wouldn't have taken the statue too far, most likely just threw it into the nearby lake.

His guess was proven right a few hours later—municipal workers did retrieve the shattered pieces of Satoshi Nakamoto from the lake bottom.

No one was caught, and perhaps no one ever will be. To the locals, this was most likely just a prank by a group of intoxicated young people.

The statue was only held in place by two welding points to its base, easily breakable with a few people's effort. In a sense, this was more disheartening than intentional destruction: to the vandals, this valuable statue was merely a plaything for a drunken night.

The statue was indeed shattered. Satoshigallery posted on Twitter, saying, "You can steal our symbol, but you can never steal our soul."

Satoshi Nakamoto is indeed the soul of the entire crypto industry, but not necessarily of Lugano, Switzerland.

Behind the grandiose declaration, last October, this statue was just unveiled at Lugano's most important blockchain event, with the mayor personally on stage, calling it the embodiment of the city's digital innovation spirit.

In less than a year, it was thrown into the lake by citizens.

When the Lugano city government ambitiously pledged to become the "European Capital of Crypto," in Switzerland, the world's most crypto-friendly country, there may exist a deeper divide between official enthusiasm and grassroots reality than the depths of Lake Lugano.

The statue can be salvaged, but what about trust?

Lugano Plan B: A Crypto Capital Bought with Money?

In March 2022, when Bitcoin was still hovering around $40,000, Lugano's Mayor Michele Foletti stood in the spotlight and announced an ambitious plan. Standing beside him was Paolo Ardoino, the Chief Technology Officer of stablecoin giant Tether.

The "Plan B" plan they jointly announced aimed to turn this small Swiss city of only 60,000 residents into the "Crypto Capital of Europe."

Plan B, as the name suggests, is a backup plan. When the traditional financial system fails, cryptocurrency is that Plan B. But for Lugano, this name carries another layer of meaning — as other Swiss cities are already far ahead on the crypto track, it needs a Plan B for overtaking on the bend.

Two years have passed, and the report card looks quite impressive:

According to data released by Tether, the Plan B Forum in October 2024 set a record, attracting over 2,500 global attendees. During the week of the forum, Lugano recorded 6,121 cryptocurrency transactions.

Almost 100 businesses in the city accept Bitcoin and USDT payments, with 300 accepting the city's LVGA token. Even the Lugano football club's jerseys are adorned with the Bitcoin logo.

But looking closely at these numbers, the narrative shifts:

What was the total amount of the 6,121 transactions? $160,000. That means an average of $26 per transaction. These numbers are still too low.

"We chose to print the Bitcoin logo on the jerseys instead of Tether for educational purposes," Ardoino said in an interview. However, local merchants privately complain that most customers still prefer to use cards or cash. Accepting crypto payments seems more like a response to the city government's requirements rather than a business need.

Even more subtle is Lugano's relationship with Tether. The world's largest stablecoin issuer is not only Plan B's main backer but also deeply involved in the city's digital transformation.

The question is, is it really wise to bet the city's crypto future on a commercial company? Especially when the company itself is controversial—Tether's reserve transparency issue remains the Sword of Damocles in the crypto world.

The incident of throwing the Satoshi Nakamoto statue into the lake seems to have become some kind of prophecy.

This supposedly expensive artwork, designed for visual effect—disappearing from a certain angle—neglected the most basic security consideration, being held in place by just two welding points.

Is this heavy on form and light on substance approach also a microcosm of the entire Plan B?

While the industry naturally grew its crypto ecosystem through years of accumulation, Lugano opted for a shortcut: pave the way with money and create hype with marketing. But, just like that sunken statue, without the social soil for tech transplantation, it might ultimately end up being just an expensive ornament.

Swiss Crypto Map, Lugano's Displaced Competition

If the Swiss crypto map is likened to a marathon, Lugano is undoubtedly the participant who started late but ran the hardest.

Zug, a small city with only 30,000 residents, began its crypto journey as early as 2013. Entrepreneur Johann Gevers moved his company Monetas here when the "Crypto Valley" was still just a borrowed Silicon Valley dream. By 2024, Zug had attracted 719 blockchain companies, accounting for 41% of Switzerland.

More importantly, this is where Ethereum was born—if Bitcoin is the Adam of the crypto world, Ethereum is the Eve.

Numbers are cold, but they tell vastly different development paths. In Zug, 47% of financial services blockchain companies and 43% of infrastructure companies chose to settle here. This is not a result of government planning but a natural market selection. Low tax rates, lenient regulations, and most crucially—an organically grown entrepreneurial ecosystem.

People working in blockchain companies in Zug likely live in the same community, have kids attending the same school, and spend weekends discussing tech matters at the same bar.

In contrast, Ticino, where Lugano is located, has a total of only 103 blockchain companies, but Lugano is not willing to play a supporting role.

When Plan B was launched in 2022, their strategy was clear: since they couldn't replicate Zug's first-mover advantage, they would take a different approach. Zug is an engineer's paradise, Geneva is a compliance expert's domain, Zurich is the center of fintech, so what does Lugano aim to be?

The answer is a testing ground for consumer applications.

Lugano chose a seemingly more appealing path: to get ordinary people to use cryptocurrency. However, two years after Plan B was introduced, most merchants accepting Bitcoin payments seemed to be more in a performance compliance mode rather than being truly driven by real demand.

A local McDonald's in Lugano accepting Bitcoin payments

Image Source: PlanB.lugano

Even more awkward is the internal competition among Swiss cities. In 2023, Zug announced an increase in the limit for tax payments in cryptocurrency from 100,000 CHF to 1.5 million CHF—an actual real-world application; that same year, Lugano also caught up by issuing a 100 million CHF blockchain bond. However, while this may seem innovative, what is the difference to the average citizen compared to traditional bonds?

Lugano seems to want to cover Zug's ten-year journey in just two years.

But the crypto ecosystem is not about building statues and leaving it at that. It needs time to ferment, failed projects to act as fertilizer, and genuine participation from the local community.

The Satoshi statue being thrown into the lake may not be because the people of Lugano hate Bitcoin, but because they simply don't care.

Pushing a crypto agenda strongly in a city lacking the crypto DNA is like trying to grow rice in the desert—it's not impossible, just incredibly costly and against the laws of nature.

Statue Metaphor

The night the Satoshi statue spent at the bottom of the lake was perhaps the most ironic moment of its existence. This artwork designed to "pay tribute to the spirit of decentralization" ultimately needed centralized municipal power to retrieve it.

While Lugano officials talk about the blockchain revolution, the citizens have their own life priorities.

The intoxicated youth who threw the statue into the lake on Swiss National Day are most likely not cryptocurrency opponents. They vandalized the statue probably more because it was just there—a target for some amusement.

This kind of indifference is more frightening than hating cryptocurrency. Hate at least implies caring, while indifference implies "I don't care."

The deeper issue lies in the development pattern of "embracing crypto" itself. The success of Zug, Switzerland, stemmed from a decade of organic growth, building an ecosystem together with entrepreneurs, investors, and tech geeks; while Lugano is attempting to replicate this process in two years, using top-down administrative drive.

It's a bit like trying to achieve the taste of a slow-cooked wood fire stew with a microwave—it may look done, but the taste isn't right.

When there is a change in government, when budgets are tight, when the next policy hot topic arises, will the crypto-friendly Plan B still be a priority?

A statue can be welded back together, even reinforced to be as strong as ever, but once the crack of trust appears, repairing it is much more difficult than imagined.

The young man who threw Satoshi Nakamoto into the lake is not a bad person, but in a city indifferent to cryptocurrency pushing a pro-crypto agenda, the outcome may not be optimistic.

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