6 Questions for Lugui Tillier about Bitcoin, Ordinals, and the future of crypto
Lugui Tillier is the sales manager for Lumx Studios, one of the top cryptocurrency firms in Rio de Janeiro — a city with a burgeoning crypto industry.
But for Tillier — who holds dual citizenship between Belgium and Brazil — cryptocurrency is more than a job. It was a passion sparked by a friend, and it evolved into his first full-time crypto job with Lumx in 2021.
1) How did you get into crypto?
I was very fortunate because the father of one of my closest friends was the one who founded the first crypto firm here in Brazil in 2016 — BLP Crypto. Before that, he was always talking to me about crypto and blockchain, telling me it was the future and that I should learn more about it. So around 2019, I finally listened to him and started studying Bitcoin. I started working for Lumx in 2021.
2) Tell us about Lumx and what you do for them.
We are a blockchain abstraction solution for big enterprises. We help anyone who wants to integrate blockchain into their business, or companies that want to deploy projects or experiment on blockchain. We do things like payment solutions and decentralized identity (DID) solutions.
Big companies can mostly focus only on their own applications — not on hiring blockchain engineers or learning about blockchain technology and infrastructure, which is still complex. So we enable those big companies to work and test safely. I’m the manager of sales for Lumx, so I’m the one responsible for building and maintaining relationships with blockchains and protocols.
3) Do you invest in crypto yourself? What do you take the most interest in right now?
I’m investing a lot in layer 2s. (I like Polygon, Arbitrum, and ZK solutions — such as ZK-Sync and Linea.) In the last cycle, we saw a lot of projects start on Ethereum, and that was unsustainable. We were paying $50 (or more) per transaction. There were days that we had gas wars, and people were paying almost six Ethereum per transaction.
I still don’t know if there was just a lack of knowledge that you could build stuff on a layer 2 among new projects and companies at the time. But people wanted to have exposure to Ethereum, so stuff that should have been happening on layer 2s was happening on Ethereum.
Liquidity is flowing to layer 2s now, so layer 2s are more prepared for the next wave.
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I also really like Bitcoin Ordinals and Ordinal Maxi Biz (OMB). We’re having an explosion of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) being built on Bitcoin, the biggest blockchain in the world. Being able to trade and express culture — it’s really amazing. That’s why I really like Ordinals.
I believe that Ordinals will perhaps capture the most of this new culture and way of expressing everything on Bitcoin. Ordinals help to express the core values of Bitcoin in a much more friendly way than Bitcoin, which is too technical or harsh for some people.
4) Where do you see Bitcoin and Ethereum in 10 years?
I think I see Bitcoin and Ethereum as the main consensus platforms in the world. This is curious, because nowadays it’s rare to see Bitcoin as a platform. We already see Ethereum as a platform where you have other applications and layers to build around it. Because of the advancements of some protocols — like Taproot Assets and Ordinals — I see Bitcoin venturing into a new era.
Related: Bitcoin fragments could become more valuable than full Bitcoins
Besides being a currency to pay for stuff, or a store of value, you will be able to store other currencies on it. Bitcoin is moving from an era where it’s been an asset to an era where it will be a platform for storing and trading other assets.
5) What is the main hurdle to mass adoption of blockchain technology?
Even though we have made significant progress, blockchain is still composed of complex infrastructure. It’s complicated not just for end-users, but also for traditional companies that want to work with it. I often joke that you only realize how complex MetaMask is when you try to teach your father how to use it — hence the importance of the emerging abstraction solutions.
While these solutions may slightly compromise decentralization, they preserve a blockchain’s programmability and automation and significantly lower the barrier to entry. This is crucial because now we have a second option. People can stay 100% decentralized if they prefer it, but for those who do not, they have the option of adopting a “semi-decentralized” model, which is the missing link to mainstream adoption.
6) What do you do in your free time?
I really like to study philosophy, especially stoicism. Everyone who works or lives in this crypto world is exposed to a lot of volatility, and they’re used to a lot of dopamine and incentives. I like stuff that you are not able to control, so I like the stoic philosophy. The mantra of stoicism is to cultivate different stuff that you are not able to control. When you master this, you are able to live in peace in this crazy crypto world. So it’s one of my favorite subjects — not only for my personal life, but also for my professional life.
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent warning letters to several exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers, halting applications for leveraged ETFs that offer more than 200% exposure to the underlying asset.
ETF issuers Direxion, ProShares, and Tidal received letters from the SEC citing legal provisions under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The law caps exposure of investment funds at 200% of their value-at-risk, defined by a “reference portfolio” of unleveraged, underlying assets or benchmark indexes. The SEC said:
“The fund’s designated reference portfolio provides the unleveraged baseline against which to compare the fund’s leveraged portfolio for purposes of identifying the fund’s leverage risk under the rule.”
The SEC directed issuers to reduce the amount of leverage in accordance with the existing regulations before the applications would be considered, putting a damper on 3-5x crypto leveraged ETFs in the US.
SEC regulators posted the warning letters the same day they were sent to the issuer, in an “unusually speedy move” that signals officials are keen on communicating their concerns about leveraged products to the investing public, according to Bloomberg.
The crypto market took a nosedive in October after a flash crash caused $20 billion in leveraged liquidations, the most severe single-day liquidation event in crypto history, sparking discussions among analysts and investors over the dangers of leverage and its effect on the crypto market.
Related: Vanguard’s 50M+ clients will soon have access to crypto ETFs
Leverage in crypto heats up, amplifying gains, losses, and suppressing markets
“Leverage is clearly out of control,” analysts at The Kobeissi Letter said in response to the SEC warning letters.
Crypto liquidations have nearly tripled this market cycle, according to crypto analysis platform Glassnode.
Liquidations in the crypto futures market during the last cycle averaged about $28 million in long positions and $15 million in shorts per day.
The current cycle is clocking about $68 million in long liquidations and $45 million in short liquidations daily, according to Glassnode.
Demand for leveraged crypto ETFs surged following the 2024 presidential election in the United States, in anticipation of a better regulatory climate for crypto in the US.
Leveraged ETFs are not subject to margin calls and automated liquidations like leveraged crypto derivatives, but can still deal a serious blow to investor capital in a bear market or even a sideways market, as losses compound more quickly than gains.
Magazine: Stop piling into leveraged Bitcoin ETFs and consider this instead
Former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler renewed his warning to investors about the risks of cryptocurrencies, calling most of the market “highly speculative” in a new Bloomberg interview on Tuesday.
He carved out Bitcoin (BTC) as comparatively closer to a commodity while stressing that most tokens don’t offer “a dividend” or “usual returns.”
Gensler framed the current market backdrop as a reckoning consistent with warnings he made while in office that the global public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies doesn’t equate to fundamentals.
“All the thousands of other tokens, not the stablecoins that are backed by US dollars, but all the thousands of other tokens, you have to ask yourself, what are the fundamentals? What’s underlying it… The investing public just needs to be aware of those risks,” he said.
Gensler’s record and industry backlash
Gensler led the SEC from April 17, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025, overseeing an aggressive enforcement agenda that included lawsuits against major crypto intermediaries and the view that many tokens are unregistered securities.
Related: House Republicans to probe Gary Gensler’s deleted texts
The industry winced at high‑profile actions against exchanges and staking programs, as well as the posture that most token issuers fell afoul of registration rules.
Under Gensler’s tenure, Coinbase was sued by the SEC for operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency, and for offering an unregistered staking-as-a-service program. Kraken was also forced to shut its US staking program and pay a $30 million penalty.
The politicization of crypto
Pushed on the politicization of crypto, including references to the Trump family’s crypto involvement by the Bloomberg interviewer, the former chair rejected the framing.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, arguing it’s more about capital markets fairness and “commonsense rules of the road,” than a “Democrat versus Republican thing.”
He added: “When you buy and sell a stock or a bond, you want to get various information,” and “the same treatment as the big investors.” That’s the fairness underpinning US capital markets.
Related: Coinbase files FOIA to see how much the SEC’s ‘war on crypto’ cost
ETFs and the drift to centralization
On ETFs, Gensler said finance “ever since antiquity… goes toward centralization,” so it’s unsurprising that an ecosystem born decentralized has become “more integrated and more centralized.”
He noted that investors can already express themselves in gold and silver through exchange‑traded funds, and that during his tenure, the first US Bitcoin futures ETFs were approved, tying parts of crypto’s plumbing more closely to traditional markets.
Gensler’s latest comments draw a familiar line: Bitcoin sits in a different bucket, while most other tokens remain, in his view, speculative and light on fundamentals.
Even out of office, his framing will echo through courts, compliance desks and allocation committees weighing BTC’s status against persistent regulatory caution of altcoins.
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