Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow
Original Title: ClawdBot Founder Says Never Issuing Tokens, Meme Trenches Go Crazy
On January 25th, an open-source AI assistant called ClawdBot went viral.
You might have seen it extensively on Twitter and various media platforms at home and abroad over the past couple of days. The project's GitHub stars surpassed 40,000, and foreigners joked that Mac minis would sell out because of it, as it needs to run 24/7, and a brand new Mac, free of other tasks, versatile and capable, is a good choice.
Simultaneously, nearly ten thousand people flooded into the project's Discord community.
ClawdBot founder Peter Steinberger also tweeted, saying he hardly looks at code anymore, letting AI write it all;
This sparked another phenomenon-level technical topic on Twitter after Dan Koe's viral inspirational piece "How to Fix Your Life in a Day" – "How to Quickly Deploy ClawdBot".
Naturally, attention brings liquidity, and the crypto friends smelled it and came.
The同名 Meme token CLAWD was actually launched on the 25th, with its market cap once soaring to $16 million. Everything looked familiar: a trending AI project, a同名 token, early players getting rich. The only problem was:
The founder said he wouldn't issue a token.
On January 27th, Peter Steinberger posted a statement on Twitter:
"Stop DMing me. Stop harassing me. I will never issue a token. Any project listing me as a token owner is a scam. No, I don't accept any fees. You are damaging the project".
On the same day, he posted another tweet:
Any GitHub folks who can help me get my account back? It's been hijacked by crypto scammers.
You won't issue a token, I'll DM you to issue it. You still won't, then I'll hijack your account and issue it for you.
Unlike the poor devs in the Meme trenches desperately waiting for an official move, this developer who created ClawdBot doesn't seem to be short of money.
I looked into his background. Peter previously founded a company called PSPDFKit, developing PDF tools.
In 2021, Insight Partners invested €100 million in this company, which at the exchange rate then was roughly:
$116 million.
After the investment was completed, Peter and his co-founder retired. In his own words, he "came back from retirement to mess with AI", now returning from retirement to fiddle with AI.
A person who retired by making products really doesn't need your token profits.
But the brothers in the Meme trenches need it.
This is the most interesting part of the story. In the crypto world's perception, "who wouldn't want to make money" is the first principle. A project goes viral, issuing a token is a matter of course.
If you don't issue, you're either pretending or waiting for a better time, even if the project has little to do with crypto.
So people will DM, harass, even hijack accounts to issue tokens through scams.
Remember when AI Meme first got hot the year before last and last year, the routine was like this:
First, have a technical project or product prototype, then the team announces they will issue a token, the community follows up, the narrative is self-consistent. This is called "technical legitimacy": you have something, so you qualify to issue.
Now it's changed.
Now, upon seeing the hype, first抢注 a同名 token, then wait for "official adoption". If adopted, everyone is happy; if not, keep speculating. Anyway, retail investors can't tell which is real.
In the Meme trenches, this "forced adoption" model is becoming the norm.
Whether it's Chinese Meme or overseas Meme, seeking mention,暗示, or endorsement from an official role in a hot topic is an action that will never stop.
It's just that this initiative is a bit too wolf-like.
Before, Meme was about "creating gods", finding a founder with a technical background, packaging them as the next Vitalik; later it was "蹭神" (rubbing against gods), naming projects after Elon, Trump.
Now it's "绑神" (kidnapping gods), if you don't cooperate, I'll hijack your account.
From active god-making to passive kidnapping, the narrative cycle of AI Meme might really be at its end.
Peter Steinberger said something in the tweet statement above that is truly worth pondering: you are damaging the project.
An open-source, free AI assistant that anyone can use is being forced to spend energy dealing with this nonsense because of harassment from the crypto circle.
I wonder if he will shut down the project because of this, or simply make the code private. Only know that if it really comes to that, the ones who lose the most certainly won't be those speculating on tokens.
The ones who lose the most are the ordinary developers who actually want to use this tool.
But does that matter?
In the crypto world, making money is what matters.
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