Founder of defunct exchange Cryptopia pops up with a new platform

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After the spectacular failure of New Zealand crypto exchange Cryptopia, the firm’s founder has returned to have another go, Decrypt reported.

The new exchange, known as Assetylene, has been developed by Adam Clark—the founder and lead programmer behind Cryptopia.

It would take a brave investor to get behind Clark’s project, after recent events which saw substantial losses arising from the collapse of the Cryptopia exchange.

The exchange was exposed to massive hack which saw some $16 million of cryptocurrency flowing out of its accounts, forcing the firm into liquidation last month. The stolen funds are currently being steadily moved onto crypto exchanges and liquidated, a process that remains in progress while creditors still wait for their money.

The audacity of Clark to return to the fold with a brand new exchange platform so soon after the devastating collapse of its original venture has been called out, with many expecting the disgraced founder to take a period of leave from the cryptocurrency scene.

Undeterred, Clark is back on the hunt for new users for his Assetylene platform. According to his LinkedIn profile, Clark put the platform together over a period of nine months, and technically left Cryptopia in February 2018.

But in a further twist in the story, investigations into Assetylene show little more than a shell website, with very little concrete evidence of an exchange business, casting further doubt over the legitimacy of appeals for new users.

The site is powered by TradeSatoshi exchange software, a turnkey software package allowing crypto exchanges to be built in minutes, while the website’s About Us page remains completely blank.

The website itself looks unfinished, and does little to inspire confidence in Clark’s vision for the startup—if indeed it plans to operate as anything other than a shell company.

Billed by Clark as “New Zealand’s most advanced crypto trading platform,” it’s clear that’s a pledge that is still some distance away for Assetylene to claim to be true. What remains to be seen is whether investors will be willing to overlook Cryptopia’s flaws in sufficient numbers to make the new platform any more viable.