The crypto weed vape found me on 4/20, the high holiday of cannabis enthusiasts everywhere. It arrived over Slack with the thumbnail of a man exhaling a plume of vapor, the words “every hit delivers Bitcoin” emblazoned across it. It claimed to be advertising a device called Gudtrip, and I thought everything about it sounded fake.

So I went looking for it. What I eventually found, after weeks of searching, dozens of emails, and a reporting effort that spanned continents, was somehow even dumber than I’d imagined.

My first port of call was Gudtrip’s website, which only made the vape seem more like a prank. The company’s description of…