Lugui Tillier is the Commercial Director of Lumx Studios, one of the top cryptocurrency companies in Rio de Janeiro, a city with a booming cryptocurrency industry.
But for Tillier, who holds dual Belgian and Brazilian citizenship, cryptocurrency is more than a job. It was a passion sparked by a friend, and developed into his first full-time cryptocurrency job at Lumx in 2021.
One) How did you get into cryptocurrency?
I was very lucky because the stepfather of one of my closest friends, Alexandre Vasarhelyi, was the one who co-founded BLP Crypto, the first cryptocurrency fund here in Brazil, in 2017. Before that, he was always talking to me about cryptocurrency 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 became deeply immersed in Bitcoin. But until then it was only a secondary interest to me. I majored in Marketing at ESPM, one of the best marketing universities in LATAM, and in 2021, after seeing the connection between brands and people expressed through NFTs and Metaverse on blockchain, I switched my entire life to cryptocurrency and started working. . At Lumx, I have had the pleasure of integrating Web3 solutions for companies such as Nestlé, Ab InBev, META, BTG Pactual, and more.
2) Please tell us about Lumx and what you are doing for it.
We are a blockchain abstraction solution for large enterprises. We help anyone looking to integrate blockchain into their business or a company looking to deploy a project or experiment with blockchain. We have developed our own solutions for account abstraction, payments, decentralized identity (DID), and smart contracts. Large enterprises can now focus solely on their own applications rather than hiring blockchain engineers or learning about the still complex blockchain technology and infrastructure. So we help these large companies work and test safely. As I am the Commercial Director of Lumx, I am always in contact with directors of LATAM’s largest companies looking to integrate Web3 into their business. It’s still a very negotiated sale, but companies, especially banks, are learning very quickly.
three) Are you investing directly in cryptocurrency? What are you most interested in right now?
I am heavily invested in Layer 2. (I like Polygon, Arbitrum, and ZK solutions like ZK-Sync and Linea.) In the last cycle, we saw many projects starting on Ethereum, but this was unsustainable. We were paying $50 (or more) per transaction. There were days when there was a gas war and people were paying almost 6 Ethereum per transaction.
I still don’t know if there was a lack of knowledge among new projects and companies at the time that things could be built in Layer 2. But people wanted exposure to Ethereum, so what needed to happen at Layer 2 was happening on Ethereum.
Now that liquidity is flowing to Layer 2, Layer 2 is better prepared for the next wave.
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I also really like Bitcoin Ordinals and Ordinal Maxi Biz (OMB). Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), built on Bitcoin, the world’s largest blockchain, are exploding. It’s truly amazing to be able to express art and culture 100% on-chain through Ordinals. So I really like Ordinals.
I believe Ordinals will probably make the most of this new culture and way of expressing what Bitcoin is all about. Ordinal numbers help express Bitcoin’s core values in a much friendlier way than Bitcoin, which may be too technical or harsh for some.
4) Where will Bitcoin and Ethereum be in 10 years?
I think we see Bitcoin and Ethereum as the world’s major consensus platforms. This is curious because we rarely see Bitcoin as a platform these days. We already see Ethereum as a platform with different applications and layers that can be built on top of it. Bitcoin appears to be moving into a new era due to the advancement of some protocols such as Taproot Assets and Ordinals.
Related: A Piece of Bitcoin Could Be Worth More Than a Whole Bitcoin
In addition to being a currency or a store of value to pay for things, it can store other currencies and assets. Bitcoin is moving from being an asset to becoming a platform for storing and trading other assets.
5) What are the main barriers to mass adoption of blockchain technology?
Although we have made significant progress, blockchain still consists of a complex infrastructure. This is complex not only for end users, but also for existing companies looking to use it. I often joke that I only realized how complicated MetaMask was when I tried to teach my dad how to use it. Therefore, emerging abstraction solutions are important.
These solutions may slightly compromise decentralization, but they preserve the programmability and automation of the blockchain and significantly lower the barrier to entry. This is very important because now we have a second option. People can remain 100% decentralized if they wish, but for those who don’t, there is the option to adopt a “semi-decentralized” model, which is the missing link to mainstream adoption.
6) What do you do in your free time?
I really enjoy studying philosophy, especially Stoicism. Anyone who works or lives in this cryptocurrency world is exposed to a lot of volatility and is accustomed to a lot of dopamine and incentives. The mantra of stoicism is to cultivate indifference to what is beyond your control. Master this and you will be able to live peacefully in this crazy world of cryptocurrency. So that’s one of my favorite topics, not only in my personal life but also in my professional life.
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Cointelegraph Magazine writers and reporters contributed to this article.