The founder of the open-source AI assistant project ClawdBot, now rebranded as Moltbot, has issued a stark warning to the cryptocurrency community after scammers launched a fraudulent meme token using the project's name. Peter Steinberger, the developer behind the viral tool, publicly stated he has never issued a token, has no plans to do so, and has no connection to any cryptocurrency claiming affiliation with his work.
The fake token, $CLAWD, was launched on Solana-based meme coin platforms and briefly gained significant traction. It reached an early market capitalization of around $16 million before Steinberger's denial. Following his statement, the token's market cap plunged from roughly $8 million to under $800,000, representing a crash of over 90%.
Steinberger explained the scam was enabled by a forced project rebrand. Due to trademark concerns from Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, he was compelled to rename ClawdBot to Moltbot. During this transition, "crypto shills" seized control of related GitHub and X (formerly Twitter) handles, which were then used to impersonate the project and promote the $CLAWD token as official.
In posts on X, Steinberger urged investors to stop contacting him, emphasized he would never launch a coin or accept fees for endorsements, and stated that any project listing him as an owner is a scam. He noted that the harassment and fraudulent association were "actively damaging" his software project.
Separately, the ClawdBot/Moltbot tool itself faced scrutiny as blockchain security firm SlowMist and independent researchers warned that hundreds of misconfigured, publicly exposed instances of the gateway could risk API keys and private chat logs. This security concern added to the confusion scammers exploited.
