Moltbot founder denies involvement in meme coins after scammers exploit Clawdbot rebrand

Peter Steinberger, the developer who previously built PSPDFKit and is now behind the viral AI assistant Clawdbot, which has now rebranded to Moltbot, took to X to denounce what he described as harassment from “crypto folks” attempting to link him to unauthorized meme coins. 

“Please stop pinging me, stop harassing me. I will never do a coin,” Steinberger wrote, adding that any project listing him as a coin owner is a scam.

The controversy erupted after Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI, forced Steinberger to rename his project from Clawdbot to Moltbot over trademark concerns. During the transition, crypto opportunists seized the organization’s GitHub and X renames, according to Steinberger’s account of events.

Within hours, fake CLAWD tokens and different variations of the rebranded name were created and distributed, with one already having a market cap of over $8.48 million and a trade volume of over $17 million, as seen on GMGN.AI as of the time of writing.

What happened during Clawdbot’s rebranding?

In a post explaining the situation, Steinberger wrote, “Had to rename our accounts for trademark stuff and messed up the GitHub rename, and the X rename got snatched by crypto shills.”

Steinberger later clarified that the name change was not voluntary. “Crypto folks: I was forced to rename the account by Anthropic. Wasn’t my decision,” he stated.

The original Clawdbot account no longer exists, as it seems the X team has taken it down. 

However, it created an opening for individuals promoting cryptocurrency schemes, a development that has caused confusion among the project’s legitimate user base and opened the door for scammers to falsely associate Steinberger with token launches.

Viral project becomes scam magnet

Clawdbot, which Steinberger named after his AI assistant “Clawd,” had achieved remarkable organic growth before the controversy. The open-source project garnered 9,000 GitHub stars within 24 hours of launch and crossed 60,000 stars by day three, making it one of the fastest-growing developer tools in recent memory.

The self-hosted AI assistant allows users to run an AI agent locally with full system access, integrating with multiple messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and Discord. Its popularity and that of the founder may have made it an attractive target for crypto scammers looking to capitalize on viral technology trends.

However, due to trademark reasons, the project had to be rebranded and is now known as Moltbot.

What is Steinberger saying regarding the project?

The Moltbot founder has made it clear that he would not accept any fees or compensation related to cryptocurrency projects. “You are actively damaging the project,” he told those continuing to associate him with tokens.

The Moltbot project continues under its new branding, though the incident has raised questions about the vulnerability of technology founders to cryptocurrency-related harassment and impersonation.

Steinberger himself has posted an update on the recovery of his GitHub account, clarifying that it was his personal account that was hijacked and has now been recovered. He wrote, “GitHub’s resolved. This only affected my personal account, not the org (messed up the rename).”

He stated that it will take another day to resolve the X account issue, adding that the original X handle is @moltbot and “not any of the 20 scam variations of it.”

Steinberger also informed users that they do not need to do anything for the next release, as the update will work just as before.

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