OpenClaw Creator Bans Bitcoin, Crypto Chatter After Joining OpenAI

In brief

• OpenClaw’s Discord now bans any mention of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency.
• Steinberger says token promoters and scams drove the crackdown.
• The policy comes as he begins working at OpenAI.

After his app went viral earlier last month, Peter Steinberger—the creator of the buzzy AI agent framework OpenClaw—confirmed the ban of any mention of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency from the project’s Discord server. Steinberger reiterated the ban after a user on X said Saturday that they were blocked from the OpenClaw Discord server. “We have strict server rules that you accepted [when] you entered the server,” Steinberger wrote. “No crypto mention whatsoever is one of them.” 

Other users on X said even neutral references to Bitcoin led to moderation. The decision follows statements in which Steinberger said scammers tried to profit from the popularity of OpenClaw, and that he received harassment and threats tied to cryptocurrency activity. “To all crypto folks,” he wrote on X in January. “Please stop pinging me, stop harassing me. I will never do a coin. Any project that lists me as coin owner is a SCAM.” OpenClaw—originally called Clawdbot—gained attention as an open-source framework for building AI agents, software designed to perform tasks for users autonomously. As interest in OpenClaw grew, so did the harassment Steinberger said he faced from some in the crypto space who sought to profit from a purported connection to the project. In a recent interview on the Lex Fridman podcast, he said he underestimated that community. “On this project, they’ve been swarming me,” he said. “Every half hour, someone came into Discord and spammed it, and we had to block people.”

He said that led to the no-Bitcoin, no-crypto, no-finance rule. “I’m not interested in that, and this is a space about the project, not finance stuff,” Steinberger told Friedman. The spam got so bad, Steinberger said he “could barely see people talking about the project because it was like swarms.” Some users on X tried to dissuade Steinberger from enforcing a strict crackdown on crypto conversations, though their pleading appears to have fallen on deaf ears—at least for now. Last week, Steinberger joined OpenAI, and announced that OpenClaw would move to a foundation structure. “What I want is to change the world, not build a large company, and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone,” Steinberger wrote in a blog post. Some users on X questioned how Steinberger’s zero-crypto rule squares with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s association with World, which Altman co-founded. Launched in 2023 as Worldcoin, the digital identity network issues a crypto token to users who scan their irises. While there is no public indication that Steinberger’s Discord policy is connected to OpenAI or to Altman’s involvement with World, his public comments also drew complaints from users who say cryptocurrency is the best use case for AI agents like OpenClaw. “What are all these AI agents going to make payments with?” one X user asked. “You building open-sourced decentralized networks on Visa rails?”