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 saying.
Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw, the open source AI agent framework that has surpassed 200,000 GitHub stars since its release in late January, has enforced a blanket crypto ban rule on the project’s community server.
A user who recently mentioned Bitcoin in passing – in the context of using block height as a clock for a multi-agent benchmark, without promoting a token – was immediately blocked.
I have been blocked since @openclaw Discord for saying “bitcoin” 🦞
CLASHD27 is a multi-agent benchmark where the Bitcoin block height is just a clock (mod 27). No tokens.
Hypothesis: can we pre-evaluate intention? If attention is measured, we bring confidence to OpenClaw agents.@steipete Unblock 🙏
– clashd27 (@blockapunk) February 21, 2026
Steinberger was clear about the ban in a follow-up response to Post X.
We have strict server rules that you agreed to when you entered the server. No mention of cryptocurrency being part of it, he said.
The rule follows what happened in late January, when crypto almost destroyed the project from the inside.
The problems began after AI company Anthropic sent Steinberger a trademark notice regarding the project’s original name, Clawdbot, which the AI company said was too close to Anthropic’s own “Claude.” Steinberger agreed to change his name.
But in the brief seconds after posting his old GitHub and
This token reached $16 million in market capitalization in a matter of hours. When Steinberger publicly denied involvement, the company collapsed by more than 90%, wiping out late buyers. Early snipers walked away with profits, and Steinberger faced harassment from traders who criticized him for not endorsing the token.
“To all crypto enthusiasts: please stop pinging me, stop harassing me,” he wrote on X at the time. “I will never make a coin. Any project that lists me as a coin owner is a scam.”
“You are actively damaging the project.”
To all crypto enthusiasts:
Please stop contacting me, stop harassing me.
I will never make a coin.
Any project that lists me as the parts owner is a scam.
No, I will not accept a fee.
You are actively damaging the project.– Peter Steinberger 🦞 (@steipete) January 27, 2026
Security researchers at blockchain company SlowMist and independent auditors discovered hundreds of OpenClaw instances exposed to the public Internet without authentication, in part because the tool’s localhost trust model breaks when run behind a reverse proxy.
Separately, a researcher found 386 malicious “skills” – add-on scripts for OpenClaw agents – published in the project’s skills repository, many of which specifically targeted crypto traders.
Steinberger has since joined OpenAI to lead its personal agent division, with OpenClaw transitioning to an independent open source foundation. The project is thriving.
But Discord’s cryptocurrency ban remains, leaving a scar after a weeklong episode that showed how quickly speculative token culture can swallow up a legitimate software project and nearly bury it.
