Denis Dariotis, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of crypto trading software firm GoQuant, has been obsessed with markets since childhood. Growing up in Montreal, he was captivated by the green and red tickers flashing across CNBC each morning. By third grade, he was asking teachers for a few minutes during class to check his trading portfolio as the markets opened and closed. When a teacher asked to see his screen, he refused — an early sign of the privacy-focused mindset that would later inspire GoQuant’s institutional-grade dark pool, GoDark.
His fascination with trading naturally evolved into programming. By age 11, he was building basic websites before moving into Python and C++. At 13, he realized he was spending too much time manually reviewing market data and began automating his workflow, diving deep into back-testing, portfolio optimization and risk management. Without initially knowing what quantitative trading was, he built the foundations himself.
A breakthrough came at 15 when he licensed his trading strategies and began consulting for a major Canadian bank — his first significant client — followed by engagements with investment managers. At a New York conference, a hedge fund tried to hire him on the spot, only to backtrack when they learned his age.
Around the same time, Dariotis began exploring crypto markets and noticed how fragmented and retail-driven they were. With liquidity spread across centralized exchanges, DEXs and OTC desks, he saw an opportunity to apply his data and infrastructure expertise. That led to building the entire trading stack for GoQuant.
By early 2025, GoQuant secured a $3 million pre-seed and a $4 million seed round led by GSR. Today, the platform processes more than $1 billion in daily trading volume and has grown to a global team of about 80 across the U.S., Europe, India, the Philippines and Morocco. Its ecosystem now includes the GoDark dark pool and GoCredit, which already has around $500 million in crypto loans in the pipeline.
For young builders aiming high, Dariotis says adaptability is essential. What begins as a single niche product can evolve into a much larger, interconnected ecosystem if you stay flexible — a philosophy that continues to drive GoQuant’s rapid expansion.
