As a very successful junior tennis player in Serbia, I had an opportunity to take full scholarship from many international universities to continue my academic and athlete career. Most of the offers were coming from the United States of America, except one, from Izmir University of Economics. At the time I had genuine interest in Turkey and I thought I had nothing to lose if I tried something different. I am very happy about that decision. My journey at IEU started in 2014 when I enrolled in the department of Computer Engineering. With such strong infrastructure, a variety of courses, and qualified academic staff, I had all the resources I could imagine. In addition to technical knowledge, I also acquired knowledge of French and Turkish language, and performed 4 years for the university tennis team as no. 1 player undefeated in singles. At IEU I gained many lifelong friendships with people from all around the world, and I had a chance to join Erasmus+ program at Riga Technical University in Latvia. During my stay in Riga, I participated in a series of financial technology conferences where I deepened my knowledge of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. At that point I decided to start my professional career in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Upon graduation, I joined Balkaneum team in Belgrade, Serbia, where we set out to build a cryptocurrency exchange platform - Xcalibra. Xcalibra is now Swiss based with thousands of traders and is the first exchange to support Serbian dinar. Since then, I have founded a company for software development and consulting services where I continue my work with Xcalibra and other projects.