Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw – an open-source AI agent framework that surpassed 200,000 GitHub stars after launching in late January 2026 – has imposed a blanket prohibition on any cryptocurrency discussion in the project’s Discord.

The ban follows a January incident in which crypto scammers hijacked his accounts during a rebrand, launched a fake token that briefly hit $16 million in market cap, and subjected him to weeks of harassment.

Steinberger confirmed the rule publicly after a user was banned simply for mentioning Bitcoin in a technical context.

“We have strict server rules,” he wrote on X. “No crypto mention whatsoever is one of them.”

What Happened

The crisis began on Jan. 27, 2026, when Anthropic…