Before I dived deep into AI, cryptography was far and away favorite CS topic. Even when I was a kid, I was so interested in encryption and decryption, that it was only augmented by the additional knowledge I gained. It's so nice that services like Steemit make it more accessible for everyone. I find it funny that it allows people to easily understand the topics, when crypto essentially does the opposite haha!
I don't know if it would've helped, but I think reading about blockchain technology first would've made reading about cryptocurrencies easier.
It would be just like me to do it backwards, lol! Though I started unintentionally learning a little bit about crypto, simply for being here and curious about how steem works.
I say that for the benefit of the others you're influencing here, that maybe the backward is the best way to go about it. I learned it the same way you did, so it's all good :D