This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations and with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. When Eli Regalado first heard God speak to him, he wondered whether he was hallucinating. Now he likens the experience to having “a thought that is not my thought.” Divine words echo in his mind like a line from a movie or the memory of a loved one’s voice.
Sometimes they surface in prophetic dreams or missives from strangers. Occasionally, they appear midsentence, when he pauses to ask, “Lord, what do you want to say here?” Eli’s wife, Kaitlyn, tends to get heavenly dispatches in the shower, when she finally has a moment to herself. Other times, she seeks counsel from above.
God’s directives have been manifold. According to the Regalados, He told them to get married, buy a house, and start having kids. When Eli owned a marketing firm in Colorado, He told him what to name it, whom to hire, and which clients to take on.
Then God told him to start preaching in his living room and online. Always, the couple obeyed. In 2021, when Eli was 41 and Kaitlyn was 28, divine guidance steered them in an unexpected new direction: crypto.
That October, the Regalados later testified in court, Eli’s sister and her husband gifted the couple some of their holdings in a little-known digital coin. He and Kaitlyn felt that they were being called to sell the cryptocurrency to fellow Christians. Later, though they had no background in crypto, they came to believe that God wanted them to launch their own coin.
Learning as they went, the Regalados created a new cryptocurrency called INDXcoin, which they promoted through family, friends, and contacts in evangelical Christian circles. The couple learned about the currency through friends—a minister and his wife, who had also invested. Starting in November 2022, Debbie and Jose withdrew a total of $70,000 from their retirement accounts—a large share of their nest egg—to buy INDXcoin.
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