So I've been feverishly researching both topics, and how to learn them. I've decided to take these 2 courses from Coursera (starting soon, in Oct 2016). Both are free, and for the ML course, one can pay after completing it and get a certificate (there's no certificate for the Bitcoin course).

https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency#

Hope you too will join these, and post updates on this thread right here.