THE HIGH PRIEST OF CRYPTOPIA REGRETS NOTHING

Ian Freeman could have been a bitcoin billionaire. Instead, he built a renegade society in a small New Hampshire town—and could go to prison for the rest of his life.

- SIMON VAN ZUYLEN-WOOD

THE CENTER OF THE CENTER OF bitcoin in the physical realm, one could argue, is a run-down two-story house on Leverett Street in the small New Hampshire town of Keene. Half-covered in peeling green paint, it’s got a wraparound porch crammed with rotting sofas, a satellite dish, bug-zapping devices, and some potted flowers. If billionaires have a scent, it is not the one you smell inside—a rainy-season Granite State musk of earth, sweat, and gorp.

On the last Sunday in May, ten days after posting a $200,000 bond and getting out of jail, the house’s primary occupant, Ian Freeman, sits down in a recording studio on the first floor to host an episode of “Free Talk Live,” the radio call-in show he founded two decades ago. At 41, dressed in a softball shirt, blue jeans, and an ankle monitor, he resembles Novak Djokovic, with short black hair, skeletal features, and the complexion of a white paper. The show begins, as it does seven nights a week, with a barrage of churning guitars—in contrast to Freeman himself, a serene presence who describes his life’s work as “advocating for peace.”