This is the nineteenth 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:
Anthony Rodriguez, founder @ Lineage and The Digital Spenders Club (5/26/2025, Season 8)
Zach Bruch, founder and CEO @ MyPrize (5/17/2024, Season 7)
Chris Waters (CPO @ Playground Productions) and Neil Berkeley (Emmy-nominated filmmaker) @ Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (5/27/2024, Season 7)
Stacy Spikes, founder @ Mogul by MoviePass (6/5/2025, Season 8)
This is the eighteenth 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:
Mr. Blue, developer and a founder @ LEVR.bet (8/27/2024, Season 8)
Kyle "Post Master", developer @ Karate Kombat (6/15/2024, Season 7)
Peter Argerakis, CEO & Co-founder @ Six Sigma Sports (9/24/2023, Season 6)
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.now
informed.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.now
About Kira Shishkin
Kira 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/kira
Get www.informed.now
About informed.now
informed.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.now
About Kira Shishkin
Kira 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/kira
Get 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.
Justin Hughes serves as the General Manager of Shareland, bringing deep expertise in fintech and real estate technology to the project. As a co-founder of RealtyMogul.com, he helped build one of the world's first and largest real estate crowdfunding platforms, pioneering digital access to the asset class. At Shareland, Justin leverages this background to oversee operations and product strategy, translating complex real estate models into scalable, user-friendly software solutions.
Justin Hughes serves as the General Manager of Shareland, bringing deep expertise in fintech and real estate technology to the project. As a co-founder of RealtyMogul.com, he helped build one of the world's first and largest real estate crowdfunding platforms, pioneering digital access to the asset class. At Shareland, Justin leverages this background to oversee operations and product strategy, translating complex real estate models into scalable, user-friendly software solutions.
William Vogt is a subject matter expert in China affairs. Heis a former Senior Fellow at the Digital Economist, a technology-centered policy think tank, where he produced timely research on the AI market in today’s China. He has worked as a consultant supporting government andinsurance companies with insights related to Beijing’s domestic and foreign policies. He is the author of Foundations of the Chinese Internet: Calculations, Concepts, Culture, a textbook designed for his former courses as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Catholic University of America. He also teaches an online course at Udemy about digital authoritarianism which features content about China’s macroeconomy. He is a two-time graduate of Georgetown University, with a Bachelor of Science from theWalsh School of Foreign Service and a Master of Arts from the Communication, Culture, and Technology program.
William Vogt is a subject matter expert in China affairs. Heis a former Senior Fellow at the Digital Economist, a technology-centered policy think tank, where he produced timely research on the AI market in today’s China. He has worked as a consultant supporting government andinsurance companies with insights related to Beijing’s domestic and foreign policies. He is the author of Foundations of the Chinese Internet: Calculations, Concepts, Culture, a textbook designed for his former courses as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Catholic University of America. He also teaches an online course at Udemy about digital authoritarianism which features content about China’s macroeconomy. He is a two-time graduate of Georgetown University, with a Bachelor of Science from theWalsh School of Foreign Service and a Master of Arts from the Communication, Culture, and Technology program.
Joris Delanoue is the CEO and co-founder of Fairmint. He builds programmable-equity infrastructure for private markets, extending beyond cap-table software to connect ownership, compliance, and capital formation on smart-contract rails. An 18-year builder, he previously founded and sold Nexteem and has launched multiple SaaS and marketplace products. He has managed and mentored large engineering teams and today oversees Fairmint and its SEC-registered transfer agent. Trained at the intersection of finance, AI, and blockchain—and a three-time International Mathematical Olympiad finalist—Joris focuses on turning private equity operations into code so companies can raise, manage, and distribute ownership with precision.
Joris Delanoue is the CEO and co-founder of Fairmint. He builds programmable-equity infrastructure for private markets, extending beyond cap-table software to connect ownership, compliance, and capital formation on smart-contract rails. An 18-year builder, he previously founded and sold Nexteem and has launched multiple SaaS and marketplace products. He has managed and mentored large engineering teams and today oversees Fairmint and its SEC-registered transfer agent. Trained at the intersection of finance, AI, and blockchain—and a three-time International Mathematical Olympiad finalist—Joris focuses on turning private equity operations into code so companies can raise, manage, and distribute ownership with precision.
Joseph Onorati is CEO of Defi Development Corp (DFDV), the first Solana treasury company listed on NASDAQ. DFDV was the best performing US stock in 2025. Previously, Joseph was Chief Strategy Officer at Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, where he worked for nearly 9 years. He started working in the crypto space in 2013, when he joined CaVirtEx, the first bitcoin exchange in Canada, where he became interim CEO and sold the company to Coinsetter, which was later acquired by Kraken.
Website: www.dfdv.com
Joseph Onorati is CEO of Defi Development Corp (DFDV), the first Solana treasury company listed on NASDAQ. DFDV was the best performing US stock in 2025. Previously, Joseph was Chief Strategy Officer at Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, where he worked for nearly 9 years. He started working in the crypto space in 2013, when he joined CaVirtEx, the first bitcoin exchange in Canada, where he became interim CEO and sold the company to Coinsetter, which was later acquired by Kraken.
Website: www.dfdv.com