Hello to Ivan and all fellow course members!
My name is Sebastian, I’m a 30yo software developer from Vienna/Austria, working in the field of embedded systems. I got first in contact with cryptocurrencies in the year 2014, when I fourst bought a small amount of Bitcoin and experimented with it a bit, though at that time I did not understand it quite well and mostly used (or shall I say “pointlessly burned”?) it for SatoshiDice and fell for the trap of trying to daytrade. It took another one to two years till I got deeper into blockchain, the economic theory (Austrian school) behind it as well as to see the possibilities of how this technology could change the world to fully develop a sound HODL mentality and the technology did fascinate me more and more. After discovering Ethereum in 2015/16, the idea of a global, decentralized, censorship-resistant world computer absolutely blew me away and it was only after then that I started to appreciate the mother of all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, more and study it more in depth, mostly by reading books and watching speeches from “Bitcoin Sherpa” Andreas Antonopoulos.
I stumbled across Ivan’s “explained by a programmer” videos likely a year ago randomly on youtube and especially after watching the interviews lately with controverse people like Richard Heart or Roger Ver I started to appreciate the channel more and more. Cryptocurrency communities behave often more like religions and it is a real gem to find people which stay neutral and are open for discussing both sides (best example small- vs big blockers in Bitcoin).
After seeing that a smart contracts programming course was offered, I didn’t hesitate at all – glad to be here, just after that short time after the course started and seeing the large community here I am convinced that the course enrollment was the absolute right decision! I hope to learn as much as possible here and as a software developer will try to help other fellows here where I can.
Happy Greetings to Sweden and all around the world,
thestack
Hi I’m Billy, I’m 19 and from the UK. I am currently in my final year of study for Physics but found blockchain last May and have become more and more obsessed each day. I am planning a small but fun blockchain project with my equally obsessed friend this summer which is what brings me to Ivan’s course as someone with some Python experience but little else apart from a passion for blockchain. 
