Crypto Hipster

This is the seventeenth episode in the Crypto Hipster's Curtain Calls Series, which includes 3–4-minute clips from Seasons 6-8. This compilation draws upon my conversations with:Carlos Balbin, Venture Partner (3/10/2024, Season 6)Niklas Kunkel, Founder @ Chronicle (5/31/2025, Season 8)Graeme Moore, Head of Tokenization @ Polymesh Association (9/13/2024, Season 8)Chris Yin, CEO & Co-founder @ Plume Network (5/18/2024, Season 7)

About informed.nowinformed.now is your news concierge to beat information overload. It provides minimal, concise, and factual daily news briefings via SMS to keep you informed without the influence of bias, sensationalism, or advertisements. Know more, read less. Get www.informed.nowAbout Kira ShishkinKira Shishkin is the CEO of informed.now, the news concierge service to beat information overload. Kira is a 4-time serial entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and investor in the technology industry. His experience spans investment banking, corporate strategy, and private equity investments in category-defining ventures. His education includes University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and Stanford. Kira was in Forbes 30 Under 30. Connect with Kira Shishkin: https://l.informed.now/kiraGet www.informed.now

About informed.now⁠informed.now is your news concierge to beat information overload. It provides minimal, concise, and factual daily news briefings via SMS to keep you informed without the influence of bias, sensationalism, or advertisements. Know more, read less. Get www.informed.nowAbout Kira ShishkinKira Shishkin is the CEO of informed.now, the news concierge service to beat information overload. Kira is a 4-time serial entrepreneur, strategic advisor, and investor in the technology industry. His experience spans investment banking, corporate strategy, and private equity investments in category-defining ventures. His education includes University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and Stanford. Kira was in Forbes 30 Under 30. Connect with Kira Shishkin: https://l.informed.now/kiraGet www.informed.now

This is the sixteenth episode in the Crypto Hipster's Curtain Calls Series, which includes 3–4-minute clips from Seasons 6-8. This compilation draws upon my conversations with:David Schwartz, Board Director @ Litecoin Foundation (3/30/2025, Season 8)Alon Muroch, CEO and Founder @ SSV Labs (5/2/2025, Season 8)Ganesh Swami, co-founder @ Covalent (10/1/2024, Season 8)Spring Dunn, Director of Marketing @ SKALE Labs (4/28/2024, Season 7)

Gleb Kurovskiy, Luminary Chief Digital Officer (PhD)Gleb Kurovskiy is a leading fintech innovator and Chief Digital Officer at Luminary Bank, specializing in blockchain, AI, and payments. With 8 years of experience in finance, including a tenure as Lead Economist at the Central Bank, and a PhD from EPFL, one of the world’s top technical universities, Gleb combines deep academic expertise with hands-on experience in building high-impact financial systems.As a forward-thinking leader, Gleb has successfully driven the implementation of crypto lending, staking, and blockchain protocol integrations, achieving in months what traditional banks often take years to build. He believes in leveraging the best of traditional finance and blockchain to create efficient, interoperable systems, redefining the way modern financial infrastructure is designed and operated.Gleb is widely recognized for his vision at the intersection of finance and technology. A finalist of the Econometric Game — World Championship in Econometrics, he continues to shape the future of digital finance, exploring the programmability of money and building next-generation financial systems that are fast, yield-bearing, and reliable.Gleb has a publication at the Swiss National Bank FinTech Conference on Crypto assets and Financial Innovation: “How algorithmic stablecoins fail”.LinkedINTwitter

Gleb Kurovskiy, Luminary Chief Digital Officer (PhD)Gleb Kurovskiy is a leading fintech innovator and Chief Digital Officer at Luminary Bank, specializing in blockchain, AI, and payments. With 8 years of experience in finance, including a tenure as Lead Economist at the Central Bank, and a PhD from EPFL, one of the world’s top technical universities, Gleb combines deep academic expertise with hands-on experience in building high-impact financial systems.As a forward-thinking leader, Gleb has successfully driven the implementation of crypto lending, staking, and blockchain protocol integrations, achieving in months what traditional banks often take years to build. He believes in leveraging the best of traditional finance and blockchain to create efficient, interoperable systems, redefining the way modern financial infrastructure is designed and operated.Gleb is widely recognized for his vision at the intersection of finance and technology. A finalist of the Econometric Game — World Championship in Econometrics, he continues to shape the future of digital finance, exploring the programmability of money and building next-generation financial systems that are fast, yield-bearing, and reliable.Gleb has a publication at the Swiss National Bank FinTech Conference on Crypto assets and Financial Innovation: “How algorithmic stablecoins fail”.LinkedINTwitter

Chris Kim is the Co-Founder and CEO of Axis. Prior to Axis, Chris co-founded Alphanonce in 2018, growing it into a leading quantitative hedge fund with $400 million in AUM. Chris entered the digital asset industry as the first hire at QCP Capital, where he ran the firm’s most profitable arbitrage book, specializing in cross-currency arbitrage strategies. He was a leading early market maker for stablecoins in regional markets and among the first to trade non-USD stablecoins. Before transitioning to digital assets, Chris built his foundation in FX and cross-border payments, developing deep expertise in currency markets and international financial flows that would later inform his approach to digital asset trading.

Chris Kim is the Co-Founder and CEO of Axis. Prior to Axis, Chris co-founded Alphanonce in 2018, growing it into a leading quantitative hedge fund with $400 million in AUM. Chris entered the digital asset industry as the first hire at QCP Capital, where he ran the firm’s most profitable arbitrage book, specializing in cross-currency arbitrage strategies. He was a leading early market maker for stablecoins in regional markets and among the first to trade non-USD stablecoins. Before transitioning to digital assets, Chris built his foundation in FX and cross-border payments, developing deep expertise in currency markets and international financial flows that would later inform his approach to digital asset trading.

Ivan co-founded Fortytwo, a planetary-scale intelligence network designed for next-generation AI applications and services. Fortytwo connects nodes running on consumer hardware with small AI models that collectively can outperform the reasoning capabilities of frontier AI (e.g.,centralized large models by OpenAI and Anthropic), creating a permissionless, scalable layer of community-driven intelligence free from intermediaries.Ivan graduated from DePaul University and, early in his career, co-founded Temporal Games, where he served as CEO, focusing on AI projects in games and entertainment. He led the creation of autonomous, self-learning AI agents using Genetic Algorithms and Reinforcement Learning, which outperformed humans in classic games. In 2018, he developed a Conversational AI service leveraging some of the earliest LLMs to enhance game character interactivity. In 2023, he collaborated with NEOM to develop a state-of-the-art generative 3D graphics model and the industry's first LLM capable of spatial reasoning. His more recent workincludes research on Animated Gaussian Splatting for capturing and reconstructing volumetric video content, followed by ongoing efforts in AI decentralization, which led to the research on swarm inference and the creation of the Fortytwo network.

Ivan co-founded Fortytwo, a planetary-scale intelligence network designed for next-generation AI applications and services. Fortytwo connects nodes running on consumer hardware with small AI models that collectively can outperform the reasoning capabilities of frontier AI (e.g.,centralized large models by OpenAI and Anthropic), creating a permissionless, scalable layer of community-driven intelligence free from intermediaries.Ivan graduated from DePaul University and, early in his career, co-founded Temporal Games, where he served as CEO, focusing on AI projects in games and entertainment. He led the creation of autonomous, self-learning AI agents using Genetic Algorithms and Reinforcement Learning, which outperformed humans in classic games. In 2018, he developed a Conversational AI service leveraging some of the earliest LLMs to enhance game character interactivity. In 2023, he collaborated with NEOM to develop a state-of-the-art generative 3D graphics model and the industry's first LLM capable of spatial reasoning. His more recent workincludes research on Animated Gaussian Splatting for capturing and reconstructing volumetric video content, followed by ongoing efforts in AI decentralization, which led to the research on swarm inference and the creation of the Fortytwo network.