The creator of the viral AI agent framework, OpenClaw, has banned all mentions of cryptocurrency from its Discord server. Peter Steinberger enacted the strict rule after crypto scammers hijacked his accounts, launched a fake token that briefly hit $16 million in market capitalization, and subjected him to weeks of harassment.
Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw, a project that quickly garnered over 200,000 GitHub stars, stated that the rule is a direct response to the incident in late January. During a brief window when Steinberger was transitioning his project's online handles after a trademark dispute with Anthropic, scammers seized his accounts. They then promoted a fraudulent $CLAWD token on Solana, which rapidly surged in value before crashing when Steinberger publicly disavowed it. This led to widespread harassment from traders who had lost money.
Security analyses later revealed vulnerabilities in OpenClaw instances and the discovery of malicious scripts within its repository, many targeting crypto traders. Despite Steinberger's subsequent move to lead OpenAI's personal agents division and OpenClaw transitioning to an independent foundation, the crypto ban remains as a stark reminder of the episode's impact.