As corporate finance becomes increasingly global, the old split between “traditional rails” and “crypto rails” is starting to look more like a workflow problem than a technology debate. Cross-border businesses want faster settlement, simpler liquidity management, and fewer intermediaries, without stitching together multiple banks, exchanges, and wallets.
In this interview, Gleb Kurovskiy, Chief Digital Officer at Luminary, explains how his path from central bank monetary policy to PhD research on stablecoins and tokenization shaped a practical thesis: the future of money is hybrid. He shares how Luminary blends SEPA and SWIFT with stablecoin-based settlement to help companies move value efficiently, and why “programmable money” is set to become standard infrastructure heading into 2026.
Q1. TechBullion: Please, walk us through your professional journey (education and background) that led you to this career path.
I started my career in traditional finance, working at a central bank in monetary policy, which gave me a macro view of how money is actually created and circulated. Later, through academic research and a PhD focused on stablecoins and tokenization, I went deep into how digital money works at a technical level. My first real interaction with blockchain showed me how much faster and more efficient transfers could be compared to banks. Even though I lost half of my funds for paying the gas fees. Luminary is a natural continuation of this path.
Q2. TechBullion: You’re building an electronic money platform for corporate clients. Can you tell us a bit more about it?
Luminary is building finance without border for international businesses. We combine traditional banking rails like SEPA and SWIFT with blockchain-based settlement using stablecoins. The platform allows companies to move money faster, manage liquidity more efficiently, and avoid having to work with different banks, multiple crypto exchanges, and separate wallets. Instead of managing all of this themselves, they can work through a single Luminary platform. The idea is to make fiat and crypto work together, not compete.
Q3. TechBullion: Who are your users and what problems do you seek to solve with your financial solutions?
Our users are companies that work with digital assets but still need access to traditional financial infrastructure. Many of them have to onboard with multiple financial institutions that are not always digital-asset friendly, and often don’t fully understand how to work with crypto. We take this complexity on ourselves by managing the risks and operational side of digital assets. Our goal is to provide an efficient end-to-end service, from onboarding with a personal manager to automated exchanges, transfers, and financial products.
Q4. TechBullion: What differs Luminary Bank from traditional banking service providers?
From the beginning, our idea at Luminary was to build crypto and traditional financial services on an equal basis. We wanted to stay technology-agnostic, understanding that traditional finance has been around for decades, while crypto and blockchain are accelerating very fast. Since we started from scratch, we could choose what is best available on the market today. That’s why fiat and crypto are built together as part of the same core infrastructure to provide the best financial services.
Q5. TechBullion: How do you see the forecast for 2026 and upcoming developments in web3 and banking? Is there something you foresee for the industry in, say, five years?
The distinction between crypto and traditional banking will continue to fade at the infrastructure level. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain settlement will become standard tools rather than niche products. In five years, financial institutions that don’t adopt programmable money will struggle to compete. Regulation will not stop this, it will formalize it.
Q6. TechBullion: What is your personal attitude towards a merge of blockchain, cryptocurrencies and traditional financial institutions? How will they coexist in the upcoming years?
I don’t think everything should be decentralized, and I don’t think everything should be centralized either. For everyday things like card payments, centralization makes sense because it’s fast and low risk. For savings or larger balances, self-custody can work better. At Luminary, we believe giving users a choice is critical. The right technology should be used for the right use case.
Q7. TechBullion: What challenges drive you and your team right now? Is there something that you are working on right now? Can you unveil some plans?
One of the main challenges for us is balancing resources between improving products for existing clients and investing in future R&D. At the same time, we are building a mix of digital and traditional assets for future products, including our own tokens, tokenization platform, and stablecoins. A big part of the work is anticipating how financial infrastructure will evolve. In one year, I believe we’ve achieved what many fintechs take four years to build, with automation as a core priority across our products.
Gleb’s view is straightforward: the distinction between crypto and banking will keep fading at the infrastructure layer, while regulation will act less as a blocker and more as a framework that formalizes what works. For businesses, the winning products will be the ones that make fiat and on-chain settlement cooperate in a single, operationally clean system.
For Luminary, that means doubling down on automation, reducing complexity for digital-asset companies that still need access to traditional rails, and building toward the next stack of products, including tokenization and stablecoin-native instruments. If the coming years play out the way Gleb expects, hybrid finance will not be a niche, it will be the default.
