God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
摘要: Culture
God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
A pastor and his wife created a cryptocurrency and hawked it in Christian com
正文
God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
A pastor and his wife created a cryptocurrency and hawked it in Christian communities. When it came crashing down, investors lost millions―and they were accused of fraud.
Matt Nager
Katia Savchuk
archive page
September 10, 2026
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. “It’s not ‘You better do this,’” he says. “It’s just a knowing inside you:
This is what you do
.”
Holy messages arrive daily while Eli is praying, reading, or watching television. 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. “I’ll be writing in my journal and praying and asking questions and just believing what I’m hearing is Him,” she says.
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. “Take this to my people for a wealth transfer,” Eli heard