He ran a startup and a fund, then founded a dark pool crypto exchange that raised $34m

Taiyang Zhang, CEO of Republic Protocol, is in his early 20s. / Photo credit: Taiyang Zhang

Singapore-headquartered startup Republic Protocol landed 35,000 ether (US$33.8 million) via an ICO last January, just a month after its launch. At that time, its CEO Taiyang Zhang was only 21 years old.

Zhang has another year under his belt now, but to him, age is not a groundbreaking factor. When it comes to work, all that matters is what you accomplish.

“Code is the only thing that is – for me, at least – very true,” he tells Tech in Asia. “It doesn’t define you by how much EQ or emotion you have in real life.”

A rewarding aspect about tech is that the old standards of measuring success don’t apply. If you and someone with 10 more years of experience than you build the exact same product, people only evaluate the product on its merits.

“I used to program when I was around 14 or so, and at the time, [we] were building a lot of hacking services,” recalls Zhang, who hails from Australia. That’s when he first heard about Bitcoin.

Code is the only thing that is very true.

“There was massive demand for Bitcoin. It made sense to have some kind of formalized exchange for that,” he says. It’s a setup that functions well within the traditional equity world, he thought, so why couldn’t there be something similar for cryptocurrencies?

That idea turned into Republic Protocol, a decentralized dark pool for cryptocurrency trading. Last week, the network announced that it will work with Wyre, an API for compliance and payments, to create decentralized liquidity.

The cryptocurrency market has a problem with liquidity in general. Million-dollar cash transactions are fairly common, and those transactions can take place without changing the value of a dollar because cash has high liquidity. Move a large amount of cryptocurrency, though, and the value of that crypto is going to change. Meanwhile, the amount it costs to move that crypto is subject to a lot of fluctuation, while transaction fees for cash are set and standardized in comparison.

A licensed money transmitter, Wyre uses blockchain technology to facilitate quick cross-border payments for businesses and individuals. It will also supply Republic Protocol with KYC or Know Your Customer, a process to learn more about consumers and prevent the service from being used for illegal activities, including money laundering.

How it works

In traditional trade, a dark pool is a private exchange where large trades are matched via a hidden order book. This conceals the parties involved in the trades and prevents the transactions from affecting the price of the asset in the market.

Investopedia says:

The wine-dark pool sea

Building the Republic