Who Is Matt Luongo? The Mezo Co-Founder Behind tBTC

Matt Luongo is the Mezo co-founder whom Mezo's disclosure names CEO of Bitcoin company Thesis, whose tBTC token had about 4,110 units outstanding on Ethereum at the late-October close. Thesis counts more than 25,000 BTC bridged, but most of the tBTC ever minted on Ethereum has been burned.

The census behind that number runs from the token's deployment in August 2021 to the last Ethereum block before the late-October close, and it finds nearly 35,000 mints against about 8,700 burns. Yearly minting peaked at about 11,740 tokens in 2024 and reached 3,939 in 2026 to that close. What Luongo's company advertises is the inflow, and the balance left behind is a little over one-eighth of everything minted.

Matt Luongo at a Glance

Who Is Matt Luongo?

Luongo co-founded Mezo with Brian Mahoney, according to the MEZO token disclosure that Mezo publishes on its own site. The same document says "Matt Luongo is the CEO of Thesis". It describes Thesis as a team with "10+ years" of work expanding Bitcoin, through products such as tBTC, Fold and Taho.

The disclosure places Thesis in Atlanta and says a Thesis subsidiary, River Delta, provides core development services for the Mezo network. So, the company the disclosure puts Luongo in charge of also writes the code for the chain he co-founded.

Luongo's longer arguments appear on Mezo's blog. In July 2025 he published "Bitcoin-Backed Burritos", first given as a talk at House of ZK in Las Vegas, on borrowing against bitcoin to spend without selling it. Thesis bills its Taho wallet as self-custodial, the setup explained in what a non-custodial wallet is, and Mezo pitches the same idea for borrowing.

Matt Luongo's Career: From Keep to Mezo

Keep

GitHub dates the keep-core repository, which held the Keep network's code, to 16 August 2017. It credits Luongo's account with 69 commits there, 17th among 42 contributors. Keep deployed its KEEP token contract on Ethereum on 28 April 2020.

The repository has since moved to GitHub's threshold-network organisation, a trace of the merger that came next.

tBTC

Luongo's largest commit count among these repositories is on the bridge's first version. Its repository dates from 21 February 2019, and he ranks fifth of its 17 contributors with 187 commits. That first token went live on Ethereum on 15 September 2020.

Its successor, tBTC v2, is a separate contract deployed on 17 August 2021. Its first mint came the next day, and every supply figure on this page counts that contract.

The Threshold Merger

Luongo's company tells the story on its own product page, which says the Threshold Network was "Formed by the first ever on-chain merger between the Keep and NuCypher networks". The same page says the bridge "doesn't require users to trust a third party" because the Threshold network secures it.

Mezo

GitHub dates mezod, the reference client for the Mezo chain, to 15 December 2023. Luongo's commit count falls along the way. His count drops to 11 commits on the bridge's second version. GitHub's 94-account contributor list for mezod doesn't include him at all. His Mezo work shows up as essays on the chain's blog.

Luongo's 28 April 2026 essay "Aerodrome for Lending" argues that vote gauges should route lending supply on Mezo and price each market's risk. Those gauges are the tool behind the Curve Wars, which Luongo's essay traces back to Curve's vote-escrow model of 2020. The essay on Mezo's blog frames lending risk as a question for Mezo, asking if "the people setting the price should be the people holding the bag."

What Is Mezo Crypto?

Mezo is the network Luongo co-founded, and its MEZO disclosure calls it "a decentralized, Bitcoin-native network purpose-built for a non-custodial BTC banking experience". Users lock bitcoin as collateral and borrow MUSD, which the disclosure calls "Mezo's bitcoin-backed stablecoin", the same collateral loop behind crypto lending on other platforms.

MEZO is the network's token. Holders who lock BTC get a veBTC position that carries voting power, and those votes steer MEZO emissions toward the markets they back.

In late October 2026 the Mezo panel on Thesis's homepage showed $76m in total value locked and 21m+ MUSD borrowed against bitcoin, both the project's own figures.

The disclosure says Mezo competes with other Bitcoin DeFi platforms and BTC-backed lending protocols, plus layer-1 and layer-2 networks, for BTC deposits. Phemex's academy maps the layer-2 side of that field in its primer on Bitcoin layer 2 projects.

How Much tBTC Is Outstanding on Ethereum?

Thesis's homepage says more than 25,000 BTC has been bridged through tBTC, but at the late-October close about 4,110 tBTC was outstanding on Ethereum.

The homepage number is a flow that only grows as deposits pile up, and the outstanding supply is the stock left once burns take tokens out. Further down, the same homepage gives a second flow figure of 26k+ BTC bridged into DeFi, so even the project's own count comes in two versions. The 4,110 sizes the token Luongo's company built, and the 25,000 sizes its history.

Of the 31,416 tBTC ever minted on Ethereum, 27,307 had been burned by the late-October close, leaving 13.08% outstanding.

Minting took off in 2024 and held up in 2025, and the 2026 total to the late-October close is about a third of 2024's. The census reads Ethereum alone, so any supply issued on other chains falls outside it.

Method: the census adds up every transfer of the token on Ethereum from or to the zero address, the chain's record of a mint or a burn. It covers every block from the token's deployment to the last block before the late-October close. The token's own supply at that block, 4,109.90, equals the census net to the last unit.

What Happened in Mezo's October Exploit?

In early October 2026 an attacker took "Approximately 5.52 BTC" from Mezo, according to Mezo's incident report. The thief moved 37 veBTC positions out of 36 holders' wallets and bridged the proceeds off the chain.

Those positions follow the veToken model, and the flaw lay in how the contract handled relayed transactions. Most of the contract's logic lived in external libraries that never received the sender address its trusted forwarder appends. A crafted transfer then let the attacker pose as the owner of any position, and the attacker went after unlocked positions whose BTC it could redeem and bridge out.

Mezo's team spotted the drain the next day, about 14 hours after the positions moved. It paused bridge withdrawals within 33 minutes of detection and halted the chain for about five and a half hours while it shipped a fix. The report says auditors had reviewed the exploited code twice.

The report promises that all impacted users "will be made whole" from protocol-owned sources, and it offered the attacker 20% as a bounty for returning the rest by mid-October. Mezo's blog has posted nothing on either outcome since the report.

It followed a July 2026 report on the same blog about a breach that exposed 1,747 email addresses of users who had linked Lolli accounts, with no funds touched. Luongo had written about an exploit on the chain before, co-authoring Mezo's February 2026 response to the drain of a third-party trading pool.

How Do You Trade Bitcoin on Phemex?

Neither MEZO nor tBTC has a perpetual or an order-book spot pair on Phemex. Threshold's T token has no live perpetual on Phemex, which delisted its spot pair in September 2026.

Luongo's company bills its bridge token as bitcoin "backed 1-to-1 by BTC reserves", so the price it follows is bitcoin's own. The BTCUSDT perpetual finished the late-October close at 80,856.3 USDT, 0.36% lower on the day. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

1. Fund a Phemex account with USDT and move it into the futures wallet before you size a trade.

2. Open the BTCUSDT perpetual and pick leverage low enough to ride out a fast bitcoin move.

3. Set a stop-loss when you enter, so the position closes at the loss you planned for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Mezo?

Matt Luongo and Brian Mahoney are Mezo's co-founders, according to the MEZO token disclosure on Mezo's site. The same document says River Delta, a subsidiary of Luongo's company Thesis, provides core development services for the network.

Is Matt Luongo the CEO of Thesis?

Mezo's MEZO disclosure says "Matt Luongo is the CEO of Thesis", though the document carries no publication date. The newest date inside it falls in January 2026, so the title is on record from then or later.

Did Matt Luongo build tBTC?

Thesis lists the bridge token among its products, and GitHub credits his account with 187 commits to its first repository. The version in use since August 2021 is a separate v2 contract that the Threshold network secures.

How much bitcoin has tBTC bridged?

Thesis's homepage puts the running total at more than 25,000 BTC. The balance is far smaller, with about 4,110 tokens left on Ethereum at the late-October close, 13.08% of the 31,416 ever minted there.

What did Mezo promise users after the October exploit?

Mezo's incident report says users who lost BTC will get it back from protocol-owned sources. Through its latest posts in mid-October 2026, Mezo's blog has published no update confirming that the payments went out.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.