Saying bitcoin on the OpenClaw Discord can now get you banned

Bitcoin is going through a rough patch, everyone sees it. But the price bleed is not its only problem. In some communities, they want to make it invisible, ban it from conversations, treat it like a leper. Not for technical reasons but for reputation issues. The latest victim is called OpenClaw, a booming AI project. Its creator just made a drastic decision that says a lot about the gap widening between crypto and the rest of the world.

16 million dollars up in smoke: the crypto curse that hit OpenClaw

To understand this story, you first have to know what OpenClaw is. It is an open-source AI framework that quickly won the hearts of developers, gathering over 200,000 stars on GitHub in just a few weeks. The project had become the undisputed darling of the tech community, driven by exceptional momentum.

But a grain of sand jammed the machine when Anthropic, the AI giant, sent a warning to its creator Peter Steinberger. The original name, “Clawdbot,” was deemed too similar to “Claude,” their own model. Steinberger agreed to change the name, freeing his old accounts to create new ones, unaware for a second that this innocuous gesture would trigger a disaster. 

Within a few minutes, scammers took over the abandoned accounts to launch a fraudulent token on Solana, the infamous $CLAWD. In just a few hours, the capitalization of this scam reached 16 million dollars, fueled by rampant speculation and misleading communication.

Steinberger quickly issued a formal denial, but the damage was already done: the token collapsed by 90%, ruining traders who entered too late. It was at this exact moment that the developer’s nightmare truly began.

“Stop harassing me”: when the victim becomes the target of crypto traders

Once the scam was revealed and the token collapsed, Steinberger immediately became the target of daily harassment of rare violence. Insulting messages, thinly veiled threats, unfounded accusations, everything was directed at him, with ruined traders holding him personally responsible for their losses. At his wit’s end, he eventually tweeted a desperate message: 

To all crypto people: stop pinging me, stop harassing me. I will never make a coin. Any project listing me as the owner of a token is A SCAM. You are actively destroying the project.

The surprise came from the reactions under his tweet, some crypto accounts defending him with rare clarity. A certain mleejr wrote a phrase that still resonates: “people who do this are exactly the reason why crypto non-natives hate crypto. This is what makes the headlines“. 

Richard Heart, Robert Scoble, and other figures commented, as if a self-criticism suddenly emerged from the depths of the crypto sphere. But for Steinberger, the damage was already done and the project was dangerously faltering, as technical flaws began to multiply.

386 reasons to ban bitcoin: how OpenClaw cut ties with crypto

Security researchers then discovered the truly terrifying scale of the collateral damage caused by this affair. No fewer than 386 malicious “skills” had been published on OpenClaw’s official repository, specifically targeting crypto traders with carefully designed traps. Worse, hundreds of instances of the framework were exposed on the net without any authentication, turning the tool into a sieve.

Faced with this massive and uncontrollable contamination, Steinberger had no choice but to take a radical measure. He instituted a strict rule on the project’s Discord: any mention of crypto, even technical or trivial, would now result in immediate banning without warning.

A user who simply mentioned Bitcoin block height as a clock for a technical benchmark was immediately kicked, serving as an example. Steinberger stood by his decision without blinking:  

We have strict server rules that you accepted upon entry. No mention of crypto, whatever the context, is part of that.

The symbol is of rare strength: the word “bitcoin” has become taboo, and crypto has definitely burned the bridge that connected it to this promising project.

OpenClaw: the figures of a fratricidal war

• 16 million dollars: the capitalization reached by the fake $CLAWD token in a few hours;
• 90%: the token’s collapse after Steinberger’s official denial;
• 386: the number of malicious skills discovered targeting crypto traders;
• 200,000: the GitHub stars accumulated by OpenClaw despite the storm;
• 64,827 dollars: the bitcoin price at the time of writing this article.

While some burn bridges with bitcoin, others bet on patience. Serious analysts, relying on historical metrics, project a price of 122,000 dollars. Confidence clings to its charts while the future is built in the shadow of panics. Cycles pass, convictions remain.