If you're looking for a free intro to Bitcoin and crypto from some of the brightest minds in academia, you might want to check out these Bitcoin & crypto resources that an associate professor of computer science at Princeton University is making available for free online. If you scroll to the end of the page, you'll see a crypto textbook that you can buy on Amazon, a set of 12 YouTube videos and even 3 programming assignments (in case you want to create your own crypto one day).
Or, you could just sign up for the same Princeton course over at Coursera.
Credits:
Image of Princeton via Wikimedia Commons