BTC City, the largest shopping mall in Slovenia, adopted a new strategy that will effectively turn it into a real Bitcoin (BTC) City. Recently, the shopping center was visited by the country’s Prime Minister, Miro Cerar, to open an international conference called Beyond 4.0 and learn more about BTC City‘s newest strategy, which includes becoming a first-ever Bitcoin City, where every product and service can be paid for via Bitcoin.
BTC City is a large commercial complex with 500 retail stores, stretching over 475,000 square meters. It has become a testing ground for a platform called Eligma, based on blockchain technology and driven by a specially-designed AI. The platform is used by many retailers in the complex, due to its crypto-payment system called Elipay. It was this very system that Tadej Slapnik, the State Secretary of Slovenia, used to buy Cerar a cup of coffee via Bitcoin.
The retailers have seen the potential of this payment system, inspiring more and more of them to join in and accept it into their businesses. Now, customers will have the opportunity to pay for their goods and services via Bitcoin, and the inclusion of Bitcoin Cash is also planned alongside the inclusion of Eligma’s own crypto.
https://t.co/Z3KtlmZwbi Shop in @BTC_City, offering health products, has joined the list of stores to offer #Elipay!
From left to right: Samo Klavora (https://t.co/Z3KtlmZwbi), Dejan Roljic (Eligma) #cryptocurrencies pic.twitter.com/AmFU5JX4lW— GoCrypto (@GoCrypto_) May 30, 2018
For now, Eligma hopes to successfully transform BTC City into a proper Bitcoin City, by including all stores into their online platform. The payment method will be largely simplified, and all stores will be able to use one central warehouse. Eventually, the retailers will receive significant reductions of ownership costs, while their stores will be able to become functioning showrooms.
About BTC City
BTC City is a large shopping center that stretches out to cover 250,000 square meters. It features up to 16 small shopping malls, with an addition of the main shopping mall called CityPark. It offers a twelve-screen multiplex and a Plaza Hotel Ljubljana. It is located in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, and serves more than 21 million customers per year.
Apart from this, the mall also offers a mini-golf course, a market, as well as an entire waterpark, together with a spa center. It boasts a large variety of different entertainment options, like bowling, a casino, 3D cinema, but also two office buildings, which include Slovenia’s tallest building called the Crystal Palace.
Ljubljana is currently becoming a safe zone for advanced technologies, which have found a thriving ecosystem in this city. There are plans to surpass crypto and blockchain technologies and to even start the exploration of Virtual Reality, AI, Augmented Reality, and even machine learning.
All of this is yet to come, but turning BTC City into a Bitcoin City is the first step, which will lead to the creation of an open society allowing consumers to shop in a new, completely different and improved business environment.
In addition to stores that will start accepting payments via digital currencies, the shopping center also offers one-way crypto ATMs, called the Blockchain Think Tank.
