Bitcoins The project’s creator nearly deleted the viral AI agent after crypto scammers hijacked his accounts, launched a fake token that hit $16 million, and harassed him for weeks.<\/h2>\n
Feb 22, 2026, 5:37 a.m. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The word “bitcoin” or any other mention of crypto will get you banned from the OpenClaw Discord. Not for spam, not for shilling, but just for saying it.<\/p>\n Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework that has surged past 200,000 GitHub stars<\/a> since its release in late January, has enforced a blanket no-crypto rule on the project’s community server.<\/p>\n A user who recently mentioned bitcoin in passing \u2014 in the context of using block height as a clock for a multi-agent benchmark, not promoting a token \u2014 was blocked immediately.<\/p>\n Got blocked from @openclaw<\/a> Discord for saying ‘bitcoin’ \ud83e\udd9e<\/p>\n CLASHD27 is multi-agent benchmark where Bitcoin block height is just a clock (mod 27). No tokens.<\/p>\n Hypothesis: can we pre-weigh intent? If attention is measured we bring trust to OpenClaw agents.@steipete<\/a> Unblock \ud83d\ude4f<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 clashd27 (@blockapunk) February 21, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Steinberger was clear about the ban in a follow-up reply to the X post.<\/p>\n We have strict server rules that you accepted whe you entered the server. No crypto mention whatsoever is one of them, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The rule comes after what happened in late January, when crypto nearly destroyed the project from the inside.<\/p>\n The trouble started after AI powerhouse Anthropic sent Steinberger a trademark notice over the project’s original name, Clawdbot, which the AI company argued was too close to Anthropic’s own “Claude.” Steinberger agreed to rebrand. <\/p>\n But in the brief seconds between releasing his old GitHub and X handles and securing the new ones, scammers seized both accounts and began promoting a fake token<\/a> called $CLAWD on Solana.<\/p>\n That token hit $16 million in market capitalization within hours. When Steinberger publicly denied any involvement, it crashed over 90%, wiping out late buyers. Early snipers walked away with profits, and Steinberger was left fielding harassment from traders who blamed him for not endorsing the token.<\/p>\n “To all crypto folks: please stop pinging me, stop harassing me,” he wrote on X at the time. “I will never do a coin. Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM.”<\/p>\n “You are actively damaging the project.”<\/p>\n To all crypto folks: \u2014 Peter Steinberger \ud83e\udd9e (@steipete) January 27, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Please stop pinging me, stop harassing me.
I will never do a coin.
Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM.
No, I will not accept fees.
You are actively damanging the project.<\/p>\n
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