OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework with over 200,000 GitHub stars, has banned all discussions related to crypto from its Discord server. This includes any technical references that are neutral. The extreme policy was implemented due to a traumatic experience that OpenClaw’s founder, Peter Steinberger, experienced when he “nearly died” from crypto speculation.
Why OpenClaw Imposed the Iron Curtain on Crypto Talk
The impetus for OpenClaw’s ban on crypto talk originated in late January. At that time, OpenClaw underwent a comprehensive rebranding process to avoid trademark infringement after receiving a notice of violation from Anthropic regarding their name, Clawdbot. Within minutes of changing their name, someone took control of OpenClaw’s abandoned GitHub and X accounts to create and promote a fake Solana token named $CLAWD. Speculators jumped into this scam and drove the market cap for $CLAWD to as high as USD 16 million while Steinberger was still in the process of issuing a public statement to dissociate himself and OpenClaw from the fraud.
After a few days, the token’s price dropped by 90%, and hundreds of angry investors/traders used the X platform to harass Steinberger, demanding he support the token. In response to these continued harassment efforts, Steinberger said, “Please stop pinging me, and stop harassing me,” and, “I will never do a coin.”
Security Nightmares Followed after Token Chaos
Many issues were revealed “thanks” to this incident, exposing the larger security problem. Blockchain security company SlowMist discovered hundreds of these OpenClaw instances exposed to the Internet without authentication, and a different researcher discovered 386 malicious “skills”, add-on scripts for OpenClaw agents, targeting crypto traders.
Following the events, a combination of a speculative feeding frenzy and security shortfalls ultimately left the project developers in defensive mode, enforcing hard rules on their official channels to prevent scam attacks and spam.
