Denis Dariotis, now 22, launched cryptocurrency trading software firm GoQuant after beginning stock trading in third grade. The company now processes over $1 billion in daily volume following recent funding rounds. Dariotis shared his journey from childhood investments to building institutional crypto infrastructure.
Denis Dariotis grew up in Montreal, captivated early by the flashing green and red symbols on his parents' CNBC broadcasts. At around 9 years old, while in third grade, he began trading stocks, even interrupting class to monitor his portfolio. "I remember telling my teachers I had to take 10 minutes out of class to check my portfolio when the market opened and closed," Dariotis recounted in an interview. When a teacher once demanded to view his screen, he refused, stating, “No, I’m afraid that's private,” a moment he links to his recent launch of the privacy-focused GoDark dark pool.
By age 11 or 12, Dariotis turned to programming, starting with web development and advancing to Python and C++. At 13, frustrated by manual data analysis, he automated processes to focus on trading strategies, back-testing, portfolio optimization, and risk management. This led him into quantitative trading without prior knowledge of the field.
At 15, his efforts paid off: he licensed his software strategies to a major Canadian bank, which became his first primary client, followed by other investment managers. At a New York trading conference, a large hedge fund offered him a job on the spot, only to react with surprise upon learning his age. "But then they were like, ‘Hang on a second, how old are you?’ And then I was like, ‘I'm 15,’ and they sort of freaked out."
Dariotis soon eyed cryptocurrency, spotting its retail-heavy markets and fragmented liquidity across exchanges and OTC desks. He built GoQuant's full infrastructure stack to address latency issues in order books. By January 2025, the firm secured a $3 million pre-seed round and a $4 million seed led by crypto trading firm GSR. Today, GoQuant handles over $1 billion in daily trading volume with about 80 employees across the U.S., Europe, India, the Philippines, and Morocco.
Recent launches include GoDark last month and GoCredit, a lending platform with roughly $500 million in crypto loans pending. "We really want to be at the center of how value moves," Dariotis said. "So we're largely a tech provider, rather than a financial intermediary, at a point in time where everything is essentially becoming a market."
For young entrepreneurs, he advises flexibility: "You have to be flexible, willing to adapt and potentially to pivot. We started off just handling data and we could have just stayed in our little data world... You want to avoid creating product silos."