The world’s first crypto-friendly shopping mall is in Slovenia

In the mid-1990s, BTC City, located in the centre of Slovenia’s capital city of Ljubljana, was transformed into a shopping mall. BTC is not in this case the acronym for Bitcoin, but a happy coincidence as it is short for Blagovno Transportni Center Ljubljana or Ljubljana Goods and Transport Centre.

The centre houses a luxury hotel, casino, cinemas, a water park and the Crystal Palace office park, home to Slovenia’s highest building, and will also have a blockchain think tank and what is believed to the largest crypto mining hub in Slovenia.

“The development of BTC City into a Bitcoin city is an important step toward the realisation of BTC’s openness-oriented strategy, providing its customers and business partners with both freedom and choices regarding their purchases with new forms of payment,” says BTC Company, which owns and manages the mall.

The firm also hopes to incentivise the launch of new businesses and ultimately see this model expand to the rest of Slovenia.