Collapse of Divinely Inspired Crypto, Solar Engineering, and Power-Saving Semiconductors

On September 10, 2026, Thomas Macaulay reporting for MIT Technology Review AI said the latest issue of the daily newsletter The Download had been published. This issue covers three technology topics. One is the collapse of the cryptocurrency INDXcoin led by a pastor couple. The second is a roadmap to support decisions on solar geoengineering. The third is reversible-computing semiconductors that recover waste heat. All three relate directly to the effectiveness and trustworthiness of technology and to how it should be governed.

Background and Impact of the INDX Coin Collapse

When Eli Regalado first heard the voice of God, he said he suspected auditory hallucinations. He testified that, together with his wife Kaitlyn, he was guided to marry, buy a house, and have children. In 2021, that guidance took an unexpected turn toward cryptocurrency. He testified in court that in October of that year, the couple received holdings of a little-known digital coin.

The words recorded from that occasion were as follows.

“Take this to my people for a wealth transfer”

Taking this as a cue, the couple interpreted it as a call to issue their own coin. They launched INDXcoin and promoted it through family and friends and evangelical connections. As a result, more than 500 people invested a total of over $3 million. Within a year, however, the venture collapsed and the invested funds were lost. Questions remain over how the funds were used and whether fraud was involved.

This story is part of Big Story, MIT Technology Review’s major reporting project. It was produced jointly with Type Investigations with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. According to Katia Savchuk, who wrote the piece, trust within the faith community became the channel for solicitation. The problem is said to lie not in cryptocurrency technology itself, but in the structure of sales and management. Court testimony and tracing of fund movements will be the focus going forward.

In fraud involving crypto assets, digital forensics and fund tracing are indispensable. Identifying attackers and clarifying fund flows requires preserving records and conducting cross-cutting analysis. The case of investigative cooperation shown in Windows GDID Contributes to Identifying Scattered Spider Suspects illustrates the importance of records and identity infrastructure. In the INDXcoin case as well, who promised what and how funds moved will be subject to verification. For engineers, the lesson is the transparency of ledgers and the auditability of operations.

Roadmap to Support Decisions on Solar

Geoengineering

Solar geoengineering is a concept for releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere. It aims to curb climate change by mimicking the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions. Research has a half-century-long history. Hundreds of studies have accumulated. Even so, the magnitude of its effects and its side effects remain unclear. No systematic plan existed to resolve the uncertainty.

In an attempt to fill that gap, Reflective has published a detailed roadmap. Reflective is a nonprofit research organization in San Francisco. MIT Technology Review revealed its contents in advance. The roadmap organizes the experiments, research, and infrastructure needed for informed decisions. According to James Temple, who covered it, the goal is to provide material for deciding whether deployment should proceed.

The significance of the roadmap lies in the fact that it is not simply about being for or against. It links observations, simulation experiments, validation of climate models, and monitoring systems in stages. The effects of particle release could vary by region. Impacts on precipitation, stratospheric chemistry, and agriculture are also subject to evaluation. Governance frameworks and shutdown procedures are considered alongside technical requirements.

For engineers, reproducibility and openness are key. The scale of field experiments, safety standards, and methods of data sharing are at issue. Infrastructure includes observation networks, high-performance computing, and long-term monitoring. Deployment without sufficient evidence for judgment carries risks. The roadmap can also be seen as serving to restrain hasty deployment.

Reversible-Computing Semiconductors That

Recover Waste Heat

In the history of computer semiconductors, waste heat has been regarded as an unavoidable cost of computation. Hannah Earley, co-founder and chief technology officer of Vaire Computing, takes a different position. Aged 31, she frames waste heat as a matter of design choice. Her company is working on an approach called reversible computing. It recovers and reuses power that would otherwise be discarded as heat.

Reversible computing is a design philosophy that reduces power dissipation from operations. It could improve the energy efficiency of data centers, portable computers, and phone devices. Last year, Vaire announced significant progress. It said it had achieved power recovery exceeding losses with a semiconductor equipped with a resonator. Recovery reportedly exceeded losses even after subtracting the power needed to drive the components.

A resonator is a component that holds power as vibration and reuses it. Previously, the cost of driving exceeded the amount recovered, blocking practical use. The significance of this achievement is that the balance has reversed. Challenges remain, including mass production, design environments, and verification methods. Still, the direction toward pushing the limits of energy efficiency is clear.

In semiconductor design trends, openness and verifiability are also attracting attention. Open instruction sets and toolchains make third-party evaluation easier. Tenstorrent Publishes GCC Patch for RISC-V Core “Ascalon XG” is an example of open-core development advancing together with tools. Reversible computing likewise requires reproducible measurements and comparisons. Standardizing how power consumption is reported and test conditions will be key to adoption.

Improvements in energy efficiency relate to loads across the entire information infrastructure. The expansion of video distribution and generative processing loads both end devices and data centers. On the display side, balancing picture quality and power consumption is also a challenge. As shown by LG OLED evo Brings Creator Original Picture Mode with Prime Video, quality control of video is linked from distribution to display. Efficiency on the computation side and optimization on the display side need to be viewed as an overall design.

Remaining Technical Challenges for Trust and

Governance

What the three topics share is decision-making under uncertainty. In INDXcoin, trust in authority replaced verification. In solar geoengineering, scientific certainty is lacking. In reversible computing, the gap between laboratory results and practical use remains. In all cases, additional evidence and independent verification are essential.

In the crypto-asset field, sellers’ claims must be checked against ledger records. Key points include how funds are held, withdrawal conditions, and whether audits exist. Faith and community ties are no substitute for technical evaluation. Procedures are needed to confirm that contract documents match execution records. Developers and operators should publish information that users can verify.

In the field of climate intervention, international governance is a challenge. Experiments by one country could affect other regions. Sharing observation data and agreeing on shutdown criteria are prerequisites. The roadmap shows research priorities but does not replace consensus-building. A perspective that designs technology and institutions in parallel is required.

In the semiconductor field, fairness in measurement and comparison is a challenge. Records under specific conditions differ from effects in general workloads. Disclosing the overall balance, including drive power, is important. Providing design information that third parties can replicate is also desirable. Efficiency claims should be evaluated together with test methods.

Editorial Opinion

On short-term impacts: over the next three to six months, scrutiny of INDXcoin-type solicitations is likely to intensify. Debate calling for fund preservation and audit disclosure could spread. Competition to publish measured data on reversible computing is also likely to advance. In solar engineering, debate over research funding allocation around the roadmap is expected to become more active.

On the long-term view: in one to three years, setting standards for field experiments in climate intervention is likely to become the focus. Observation networks and model validation could be developed. Reversible computing is likely to begin with application-specific accelerators. In crypto assets, verifiable disclosure is expected to become established as a condition for trust.

Questions from the editors: there is the issue of whose words should count as evidence. Divine guidance or founders’ claims are no substitute for verification. It is also undetermined at what stage evidence should be deemed sufficient. Whether conditions for suspension or withdrawal can be set in advance is the question at hand.

References

• “The Download: a “God-driven” cryptocurrency and a solar engineering roadmap”, by Thomas Macaulay — MIT Technology Review AI, 2026-09-10T12:10:00.000Z (ARR)
• Source URL: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/10/1143828/the-download-christian-cryptocurrency-scandal-solar-engineering-roadmap/