A new worrying amalgamation of crypto scams and vibe coding emerges from the bowels of the internet in 2026

2025 was the breakthrough year when software creation became easy. AI models became much better and even doing a "ralph loop" on a simple prompt in a few hours could produce copious amount of working code. As a result you have burned through thousands of dollars of tokens to get some barely working "product" but you had no idea who or why would use it. In order to develop it into proper product you would have to learn how to code, product development, marketing and so on. But what if there was an easy way to "dump it" on unsuspecting masses?

The initial software Pump and Dump event could be considered when Cursor burned through millions of dollars to build a barely working browser. Naturally there was no way to finish such a monstrous heap of software into a working product and why would anybody use a vibe coded browser anyway? The "dump" on their end was to use this as marketing bait and a way to inflate their valuation.

At the start of 2026 "gastown" project attracted my attention. What initially looked as a schizoprenic vibe coded fever dream was touted by multiple tech blogs as possibly a "new thing", maybe revolution of some sort. Later a blog post by project author announced that he had taken a donation from crypto bros and the things started to click together for me. That is how a new unholy frankenstein of vibe coding crypto is born. This is how it works:

• Fame hungry tech bro vibe codes (prompts) an unholy blob of "software". To do that he does initial investment of several thousand dollars into AI tokens.
• Since the product is a monstrosity and it can not be commercialized, it does not sell and probably does not generate fame either
• A tech person is approached by crypto bros and is offered a stake in some shitcoin. The deal is accepted because developer does not want to be holding the 'bags' for his initial investent in AI software pump
• Crypto scammers and bots hype and astroturf the new project in all possible platforms to raise awareness of the project and associated COIN
• Unsuspecting tech bros start actually trying out the software tool and help amplify the message because of the FOMO happening in tech space due to rapid evolution of AI tools.
• After a few months the software dump happens. The coin is dumped on the market and every developer moves on to the next shiny software thing.
• The author kills the project because it is an unmaintainable mountain of code that could be only further developed with AI tools, but that does not come cheap.

A few days ago I started being bombarded with hype posts about Clawdbot. I sincerely believe this is another instance of software "pump and dump". Today after opening Linkedin the first three posts are #lookingforwork CTOs hyping Clawdbot as the next big thing. After taking a quick look at the project I have concluded that it is an unsecure mess of a vibecoded software blob that will be forgotten in a few months. However CLAWD coin tokens are kicking off right now and people are being lured into buying them as the hype grows.

So please look at these projects with a critical mindset. Keep in mind that many posts hyping them could be paid astroturfing by crypto and don't fall for the vibe coded software FOMO hype. Otherwise you might be the one holding the bags in the end!