Updated with comments from Adam Clark.
It appears that the founder of the recently hacked and shuttered Cryptopia exchange has wasted no time in founding a new one.
Adam Clark, Cryptopia’s founder and erstwhile lead developer, now describes himself on Twitter and LinkedIn as the founder of a second exchange —“Assetylene,” a misspelling of a foul-smelling hydrocarbon gas.
We reached out to Clark, who told us the exchange was a passion project after departing Cryptopia, which was New Zealand’s largest exchange until it went into administration earlier this month, after suffering a $23 million breach in January.
"I left Cryptopia in late 2017 early 2018 due to new management wanting to take the company in a different path I fundamentally disagreed with, so we parted ways and I started working on the core products I wanted in the Crypto space," he said.
He says he started building the trading processor for a "crypto marketplace" called Chainstack, then "got a wee-bit carried away and ended up making a full trading engine," which became Assetylene. He then experimented with UI and APIs to see if he could ready the platform for enterprise use, he said. He added that the project fixes various "scaling problems" faced by Cryptopia.
Assetylene joined Twitter in September 2018, and so far has 71 followers. It also appears—from an early archived copy—to be a copy of the popular “TradeSatoshi” exchange, where Clark worked as a senior developer.
"Cryptopia, Tradesatoshi and Assetylene obviously all look alike because I made/designed each platform, so I guess I have a style maybe," he explained.
But Assetylene, which purports to be “New Zealand's most advanced crypto trading platform,” is still in beta, Clark said. Nevertheless, it "allows the clients to use the platform with test coins and ask for additions/improvements," he added. It has no planned launch date as of yet.