Blocked when mentioning "Bitcoin"! Why is OpenClaw reintroducing the "cryptocurrency mute order" on Discord?
As long as you mention “Bitcoin” or any cryptocurrency-related terms in the popular open-source AI agent community “OpenClaw” official Discord server, the consequence is immediate removal from the server. It’s not because you’re posting spam ads or maliciously pumping a coin; it’s simply because “you mentioned Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies.”
OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework that has garnered over 200,000 stars on GitHub since its release at the end of January this year. However, OpenClaw’s founder, Peter Steinberger, has issued the strictest “cryptocurrency ban” in this highly popular community.
Recently, a user casually mentioned Bitcoin during a technical discussion—his intention was merely to explore “whether block height can be used as a timer for multi-agent benchmarking, with no promotion of tokens or investment topics,” yet he was immediately banned after speaking.
Got blocked from @openclaw Discord for saying ‘bitcoin’ 🦞
CLASHD27 is a multi-agent benchmark where Bitcoin block height is just a clock (mod 27). No tokens.
Hypothesis: can we pre-weigh intent? If attention is measured, we bring trust to OpenClaw agents. @steipete Unblock 🙏
— clashd27 (@blockapunk) February 21, 2026
Peter Steinberger later responded on platform X: “When you join the server, you agree to our strict community guidelines, one of which is a complete ban on mentioning cryptocurrencies.”
This “gag order” was triggered by a painful experience that nearly caused the entire project to collapse from within.
Back in late January, AI giant Anthropic issued a trademark infringement warning to Peter Steinberger, accusing the project’s original name “Clawdbot” of being too similar to their own AI model “Claude.”
Peter Steinberger readily agreed to change the name; however, within just a few seconds of releasing his old GitHub and X accounts and preparing to register a new name, scammers quickly seized these old accounts and began promoting a fake token called “$CLAWD” on social media.
Within hours, the market cap of $CLAWD soared to $16 million. When Peter Steinberger urgently clarified that he had no connection to the token, its price plummeted over 90%, causing retail investors who entered at the peak to lose everything, while early “snipers” had already taken profits and exited.
Worse still, many distressed investors vented their anger on Peter Steinberger, accusing him of refusing to publicly support the token and causing their losses, flooding him with harassment messages. He publicly responded on X at the time:
To all crypto folks: Please stop pinging me, stop harassing me. I will never do a coin. Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM. No, I will not accept fees. You are actively damaging the project.
— Peter Steinberger 🦞 (@steipete) January 27, 2026
To make matters worse, SlowMist, a blockchain security company, along with independent auditors, discovered that hundreds of instances of OpenClaw (referring to separate software units running on servers) were exposed directly to the public internet without authentication. Part of the reason was that when the tool operated under a reverse proxy environment, its original trust model on the local machine was completely broken.
Additionally, another security researcher identified 386 malicious “skills” (extensions or plugins for OpenClaw), many of which were specifically designed traps targeting crypto traders.
Today, Peter Steinberger has joined OpenAI to lead “personal AI agent” initiatives; meanwhile, OpenClaw has been transferred to an independent open-source foundation and is currently experiencing rapid development.