João Abdalla

At Xendora (former Izzi Wallet), I was brought in when the project was just a PowerPoint concept, and I led the end-to-end design and development of the entire platform, transforming it into a high-volume cross-border payments solution serving Latam crypto players with global financial access. Izzi Wallet bridges crypto and traditional finance, enabling users to seamlessly move funds between self-custody wallets and global banking/payment rails—a game-changer for institutional and high-net-worth clients operating in emerging markets. Key Achievements & Technical Innovations 🚀 Built a Scalable, Secure, & Global Crypto-Banking Platform • Designed and launched crypto-fiat on/off ramps & cross-border payment rails with self-custody wallet integration, allowing users to access global banking without giving up control of their assets. • Deployed a Terraform + Kubernetes infrastructure on Azure, with TypeScript/NestJS backend and React Native mobile experience. 💰 Massive Scale & Market Adoption • Processed $400M+ in monthly transactions, serving a growing institutional user base. • Secured an MSB license in the U.S., opening doors for global banking partnerships to provide local and international payment rails. • Built and expanded partnerships with banks, FX providers, and compliance solutions to scale financial accessibility. 🔒 Security & Compliance Without Custody Risks • Ensured maximum security by eliminating custody risks, allowing users full control over their assets while accessing global financial infrastructure. • Established multi-layer fraud prevention, KYC, and AML processes through strategic compliance partnerships. 🌍 Strategic Expansion & Future Vision • Developing retail-focused products to complement institutional banking solutions. • Driving a funding round to scale and accelerate Izzi Wallet’s mission to bridge TradFi & DeFi worldwide.

At 2GO Bank, I led the entire product development lifecycle, from market research and product discovery to MVP validation and engineering execution. My role blended strategic product leadership with technical expertise, ensuring seamless collaboration between design, data science, engineering, and business stakeholders. Key Achievements & Innovations 🚀 Led New Product Development & Expansion Initiatives • Spearheaded the revamp of digital banking UX, optimizing user flows for better engagement and retention. • Designed and launched new payment methods and flows, enhancing transactional efficiency. • Developed crypto liquidity solutions for corporate clients, expanding institutional adoption within the bank’s ecosystem. • Led the development of niche white-label banking solutions, such as Banco Torcedor, a custom financial platform for soccer team supporters. 📈 Driving Growth Through Strategic Partnerships • Played a key role in hunting, negotiating, and onboarding partnerships, helping expand 2GO Bank’s financial services portfolio. • Collaborated with compliance and regulatory teams to ensure full adherence to KYC/AML and banking regulations. 👥 Cross-Functional Leadership & Team Development • Led a 10-person cross-functional team, overseeing design, engineering, and data-driven decision-making. • Established a structured research & MVP validation process, ensuring customer insights drove product evolution. • Maintained direct alignment with stakeholders, compliance teams, and partners to guarantee business and regulatory fit. 💡 Strategic Leadership Lessons This experience refined my ability to align product vision with market demands, effectively bridge communication between tech and business stakeholders, and execute data-driven product strategies—all of which became foundational in my role as CTO at Izzi Wallet.

At Beplix, I co-founded and led the development of a high-performance liquidity provider (LP) platform, designed to serve institutional crypto traders with ultra-low latency execution, deep liquidity, and seamless integration. We built a robust order routing system that aggregated 100M+ USD in daily liquidity from global exchanges, OTC desks, and institutional partners, ensuring fast and efficient trade execution. Key Achievements & Technical Innovations 🚀 Engineered a Global Order Routing System • Built a GoLang-based Order Router, integrating with multiple exchanges, FIX gateways and APIs • Achieved sub-50ms trade execution latency worldwide by developing a geographically distributed infrastructure near institutional clients. • Designed a bulletproof CI/CD pipeline with Kubernetes (orchestration), ArgoCD (CI/CD), and Helm (flow management), ensuring high system reliability and uptime. 🔒 Advanced Security & Compliance • Implemented multi-layer security with MPC, Intel SGX, a proprietary Signature Policy Engine, and deposit address authentication networks for wallet protection. 📈 Scaled Institutional Liquidity & Trade Execution • Supported 120+ assets across 40 blockchains, with seamless currency conversion and credit management for global settlements. • Maintained an average 25M BRL in daily crypto trading volume. 💰 Profitability & Acquisition • Reached profitability within six months, fully bootstrapped by the founders. • Successful exit 👥 Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration • Hired, trained, and led a team of 15 senior developers • Built strong cross-functional relationships, working daily with compliance, trading desks, marketing, treasury, and business development. This experience sharpened my expertise in high-performance trading systems, institutional crypto liquidity, security & compliance, and scaling global infrastructure, solidifying my role as a technical and strategic leader in fintech & digital assets.

At Be On Invest, I co-founded and led the development of a cutting-edge automated trading platform designed to democratize algorithmic trading for investment clubs, advisory firms, and high-net-worth traders. Unlike traditional high-frequency trading (HFT) systems tailored for institutional investors, we provided cost-effective, high-performance trading automation to smaller players, optimizing liquidity management, portfolio rebalancing, and long/short strategies, to cite a few. Key Achievements & Technical Innovations: 🚀 Built a Low-Latency Trading Infrastructure: • Developed HFT and algorithmic trading systems in Python (FIX gateway), MQL5 (MetaTrader 5), and NTSL (Profit Pro). • Engineered a Golang-based execution system that reduced order placement latency from 250ms to 20ms, achieving 5ms execution speeds. • Implemented geolocation and tunneling techniques to further optimize trade execution. 📈 Massive Trading Scale & Market Impact: • Handled 5 billion BRL in annual trading volume, reaching up to 1% of the daily volume in dollar futures contracts on B3. 💰 Profitable & Bootstrapped Business Model: • Monetized through subscription fees and profit-sharing agreements with exchanges. • Generated more than 1 million BRL in revenue • Operated profitably from day one without external funding, prioritizing R&D before scaling. • Successfully exited the company, selling it through my personal networking. 👥 Leadership & Team Building: • Hired, trained, and managed a team of 4 engineers, overseeing all technical architecture and system development. This experience cemented my ability to design and scale financial technology platforms, optimize high-performance trading systems, and navigate the complexities of fintech entrepreneurship.

At RPM Comunicação Digital, I was responsible for building and optimizing backend systems for high-traffic promotional campaigns run by major Brazilian brands. These systems supported sweepstakes and prize competitions, where customers would input promo codes from product packages to participate. Key Contributions & Achievements: • Built scalable APIs and database architectures using PHP (CodeIgniter) and MySQL to handle large volumes of users in time-sensitive promotions. • Optimized system performance, reducing CPU usage by 40% and improving API response time by 80%, ensuring a smooth user experience. • Implemented caching strategies and database query optimization, resulting in 20% cost reduction on infrastructure and 35% increase in user retention. • Collaborated closely with designers and frontend developers to align backend functionalities with campaign requirements and UI/UX needs. This role sharpened my ability to write highly efficient code for high-traffic applications, a skill that later proved essential in fintech and crypto-related high-performance systems.