How not? It doesn't explain it anywhere. Saying "I first heard about Foobar a while back" doesn't imply anything about the reader.
The fact that the author doesn't explain what they do anywhere (except for what you can infer by reading what they say about the product later) does.
> But if you don't know what bl—ch— in the third paragraph refers to
It took me longer than it should (pre-caffine) to parse this part of the article, so I'll supply a hint.
The article describes it as a "distributed cryptographic ledger," and Bitcoin is another instantiation of this idea.
> A while back, a digital acquaintance of mine went to work for the company Zora, which made me aware of its existence and curious about its purpose.
should be a pretty big hint that the article does not presuppose that the reader knows about Zora. But if you don't know what bl—ch— in the third paragraph refers to, the article is probably confusing.