Ben Shyong is the founder of Anzen Finance and a co-founder of Evernew Capital. Shyong has held roles at various companies, including Walmart and Ad Hoc, and has been involved in several technology projects. ^{[1] [2]}

Education

Ben Shyong attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with concentrations in Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Chemistry. He also studied at New York Medical College, dropping out to pursue entrepreneurship, and earned an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. ^{[2] [1] [4] [3] [6]}

Career

Ben Shyong began his career co-founding Meddik in 2011, a platform designed to help individuals with chronic conditions share experiences and learn from others. He served as the Founder, CTO, and COO of Meddik until 2014, having dropped out of medical school to start the company. In 2012, he was also an entrepreneur at Blueprint Health LLC. Following Meddik, he was involved with Assembly (YC W14) starting in 2014, an online platform and community reaching 4.5 million users that enables users to develop apps and APIs with each other. At Assembly, he managed a portfolio of open-source projects built by engineers and designers across 36 different countries, which served as a basis for later work with blockchain technology by building tools for co-creating software, sharing profits, and recording contributions on the blockchain. In 2015, he became the VP Engineering at Lynchpin Technologies, working on a CRM, marketing, and data analytics platform to help health insurers detect member health intent and manage risk. From 2016 to 2020, Shyong worked as a Staff Software Engineer and Team Lead at Ad Hoc LLC, a software company that emerged from the successful HealthCare.gov rescue effort. In this role, he collaborated with the US Digital Service and US Veteran Affairs on digital modernization initiatives, building several products aimed at significantly improving the delivery of and access to essential Veteran benefits and services.

From 2020 to 2022, Shyong held Senior Manager roles in Finance and Strategy at Walmart, focusing on areas such as Pharmacy Innovation and Digital Transformation, Health and Wellness Strategy, and Real Estate teams. His work involved capital allocation, investment analysis, and strategic decision support across Walmart's US portfolio of 4,600+ stores. In 2022, he became a Principal at Opcode. Also starting in 2022, he became a Contributor at Anzen, a digital dollar project backed by a diversified portfolio of private credit assets, providing stability through all market cycles. Anzen provides loss protection for private credit investors by generating sustainable DeFi yields for use as reserves to cover potential losses arising from defaults. It is recognized as the founder of Anzen, aiming to expand the institutional private credit market to a retail audience through on-chain smart contracts, as there were previously no standardized methods to price protection in private markets. He is also a co-founder of Evernew Capital and an investor at Perseverance Capital.

Shyong has been involved in several technology and entrepreneurial projects. These include Boba Bros, a premium bubble tea shop serving the University of Pennsylvania, featuring original recipes for authentic made-to-order boba, Taiwanese teas, and sweets. He also participated in various hackathon projects such as µWave, a texting, tweeting, youtube video playing microwave that won first place at PennApps Data Hackathon. He also co-founded the inaugural Penn iGEM synthetic biology team, developing a light-based cell signaling system with precise, temporal control, using Human Embryine Kidney (HEK) 293T cells. Other projects include WiiConductor, which used a Nintendo Wiimote to control the tempo and volume of Garage Band tracks, completed at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. He also developed SeptaNOW, a real-time tracking tool for SEPTA regional trains and comprehensive map of locations to buy tokens and passes, which won the Audience's Choice award at PennApps Hackathon. He also developed Xiggit, a student textbook exchange and price comparison tool. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [3] [6]}

Interviews

Crypto Conversation podcast #01

In an episode of the Crypto Conversation podcast, Ben Shyong, co-founder of Anzen Finance, outlined the rationale behind the creation of USDZ, a stablecoin developed by the company. According to Shyong, the project was designed to offer a stable digital asset backed by real-world financial instruments, with a focus on fixed-income products such as private credit.

Shyong described USDZ as collateralized by cash-generating securities within the private credit sector, which operates under established regulatory frameworks. This structure, as explained in the interview, aims to maintain price stability while enabling the distribution of returns to participants in the system.

He indicated that the target audience for USDZ includes individuals seeking predictable yields and lower exposure to market volatility. The company’s development approach includes a multi-chain strategy, with integrations on networks such as Base, to facilitate broader utility for the token, including its use as collateral in decentralized lending platforms.

The conversation also addressed the challenges associated with aligning terminology and practices from traditional finance with those found in decentralized systems. Shyong referred to the integration of both domains as a key step in increasing adoption. He noted observable trends in emerging markets, where crypto-based financial tools are being utilized in areas underserved by conventional banking infrastructure.

The interview also referenced Anzen Finance’s $4 million seed funding round, which included participation from firms such as Circle and Mechanism Capital. Toward the end of the discussion, Shyong mentioned ongoing development efforts and mechanisms aimed at incentivizing early contributors to the ecosystem. ^[7]