{"id":296459,"date":"2026-02-22T09:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/296459\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T09:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T09:50:08","slug":"mentioning-bitcoin-on-ai-agent-openclaws-discord-will-get-you-banned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/296459\/","title":{"rendered":"Mentioning &#8216;bitcoin&#8217; on AI agent OpenClaw&#8217;s Discord will get you banned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word &#8220;bitcoin&#8221; 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<p>Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework that has surged past <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/openclaw\/openclaw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">200,000 GitHub stars<\/a> since its release in late January, has enforced a blanket no-crypto rule on the project&#8217;s community server.<\/p>\n<p>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<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Got blocked from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/openclaw?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@openclaw<\/a> Discord for saying &#8216;bitcoin&#8217; \ud83e\udd9e<\/p>\n<p>CLASHD27 is multi-agent benchmark where Bitcoin block height is just a clock (mod 27). No tokens.<\/p>\n<p>Hypothesis: can we pre-weigh intent? If attention is measured we bring trust to OpenClaw agents.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/steipete?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@steipete<\/a>  Unblock \ud83d\ude4f<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 clashd27 (@blockapunk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/blockapunk\/status\/2025176010044342565?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 21, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steinberger was clear about the ban in a follow-up reply to the X post.<\/p>\n<p>We have strict server rules that you accepted whe you entered the server. No crypto mention whatsoever is one of them, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The rule comes after what happened in late January, when crypto nearly destroyed the project from the inside.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble started after AI powerhouse Anthropic sent Steinberger a trademark notice over the project&#8217;s original name, Clawdbot, which the AI company argued was too close to Anthropic&#8217;s own &#8220;Claude.&#8221; Steinberger agreed to rebrand. <\/p>\n<p>But in the brief seconds between releasing his old GitHub and X handles and securing the new ones, scammers seized both accounts and <a href=\"https:\/\/cyberunit.com\/insights\/clawdbot-moltbot-security-update\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">began promoting a fake token<\/a> called $CLAWD on Solana.<\/p>\n<p>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<p>&#8220;To all crypto folks: please stop pinging me, stop harassing me,&#8221; he wrote on X at the time. &#8220;I will never do a coin. Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You are actively damaging the project.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">To all crypto folks: <br \/>Please stop pinging me, stop harassing me. <br \/>I will never do a coin.<br \/>Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM.<br \/>No, I will not accept fees.<br \/>You are actively damanging the project.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Peter Steinberger \ud83e\udd9e (@steipete) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/steipete\/status\/2016072109601001611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">January 27, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Security researchers at blockchain firm SlowMist and independent auditors found <a href=\"https:\/\/slowmist.medium.com\/threat-intelligence-analysis-of-clawhub-malicious-skills-poisoning-0448ffd49c80\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">hundreds of OpenClaw instances<\/a> exposed to the public internet with no authentication, partly because the tool&#8217;s localhost trust model breaks when run behind a reverse proxy.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, a researcher found 386 malicious &#8220;skills&#8221; \u2014 add-on scripts for OpenClaw agents \u2014 published on the project&#8217;s skill repository, many targeting crypto traders specifically.<\/p>\n<p>Steinberger has since joined OpenAI to lead its personal agents division, with OpenClaw moving to an independent open-source foundation. The project is thriving. <\/p>\n<p>But the crypto ban on Discord stays, leaving a scar from a weeks-long episode that showed how fast speculative token culture can engulf a legitimate software project and nearly bury it.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The word &#8220;bitcoin&#8221; or any other mention of crypto will get you banned from the OpenClaw Discord. Not&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-296459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}