From Brazil’s favelas to crypto millions

Luiz Claudio’s life has been anything but predictable. From humble beginnings in Brazil to conquering traditional finance, then losing everything in crypto before rebuilding it all and becoming IAmCryptoGuy—his journey is one of resilience and reinvention.

He grew up in Belo Horizonte, a city in southeastern Brazil, in a household where money wasn’t just scarce—it felt unattainable.

“For my family, money was something unachievable,” Claudio told The Crypto Radio. “First you need to earn, to save… You are here, and money is there. So there is a huge gap that you cannot achieve… To earn money, you need to work hard, hard, hard. You need to do crazy things. And if you got lucky, you can pay your bills.”

That mindset didn’t sit well with him. At 17, he came across the world of futures trading in a university economics class, a discovery that would change his life. Determined to break out of poverty, he taught himself about finance—translating investment books word by word using Google Translate in the early 2000s. He landed his first job at a hedge fund in Brazil, where he quickly went from intern to lead trader, managing millions.

From Brazil to Wall Street and beyond

Claudio’s talent took him from South America to the financial hubs of the world. In London, he worked in the heart of traditional finance (TradFi), making a name for himself in the industry. Later, he moved to Chicago, where he built his own firm and expanded his expertise in forex and stock markets.

Yet, for all his success in TradFi, crypto was a mystery to him. When he first encountered Bitcoin in 2013, he dismissed it. “I bought Bitcoin just to send money to Germany faster,” he admitted. “I didn’t believe in it at all.”

It wasn’t until 2017, when he first saw one of Chicago’s Bitcoin ATMs, that he realized crypto wasn’t just a passing trend—it was the future. By then, Bitcoin had surged past $10,000, and Claudio knew it was time to pivot.

The fall: Losing everything in 2022

By 2022, Claudio had made it big in crypto. Living in Dubai, driving supercars, and trading full-time, he had built a fortune.

Then came FTX.

Like thousands of investors, Claudio had huge holdings on the exchange when it collapsed in November 2022. In a matter of days, everything was gone.

“One week later, I needed to pay rent, and I didn’t have money,” he said. His life unraveled—he lost his money, his relationship, and even his family stopped talking to him. He went from luxury living in Dubai Marina to renting a cramped partitioned room in Deira, surviving on three shawarmas a day.

Forced to move, he threw out all his old clothes—a symbolic act of shedding his past life. “Every outfit reminded me of something—friends I lost, the life I used to have. I couldn’t look at them anymore.”

“I sat there thinking, ‘This is my life now.’”

For months, he battled depression. But one moment changed everything.

A date rejected him after learning about his living situation, patting him on the shoulder and saying, “Good luck.”

That was the wake-up call.

“I went to my room with a lot of mold, and I said, I'm gonna die now, yeah, or I'm gonna do it. And I start to do it.”

Determined to claw his way back, Claudio borrowed $1,000—his last chance at redemption. In just one week, he turned it into $7,000 through high-risk, high-leverage crypto futures trading. By the third week, he had scaled his account to $28,000.

The first thing he did was buy new clothes, unable to even look at his old ones—they were reminders of everything he had lost.

He didn’t stop there. Claudio teamed up with the crypto and stock trading firm HBS, where he began rebuilding his fortune from scratch.

Lessons from the rebuild

Having lived through both wild success and devastating failure, Claudio now uses his platform to educate traders. His top lessons for beginners?

• Learn before you invest. “People imagine that you go buy a car, right? You are going to look at the color of the car, the model of the car, the year of the car, like you're going to look at everything. So why do people go to crypto without knowing what's crypto?”
• Start small. “Start with $100. If you lose with $100, you are going to lose with $100,000.”
• Never borrow money to trade. “Never take money from someone to invest in any financial markets.”

When it comes to memecoins, he acknowledges their volatility but recognizes their growing legitimacy, especially after Donald Trump’s entry into the space.

“Memecoins, they are real, you can make a really good amount of money of that, but you need to understand how they work,” he told The Crypto Radio. “The community makes the price pump, but investors make the trends.”

The comeback

Today, Claudio is back on top, but he knows better than to take anything for granted.

From a moldy partitioned room to supercars in Dubai, Claudio’s story proves that rock bottom can be the foundation for a comeback.

 

Listen to the whole interview on The Crypto Radio's live player or in My Crypto Journey podcast.