The Age of Pump and Dump Software

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 would have burned through thousands of dollars of tokens to get some barely working “product” and you would have no idea who or why would use it. In order to develop it into proper offering 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 then things started to click together for me. That is how a new unholy frankenstein of vibe coding and crypto is born. It could work like this:

• 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, but suddenly it starts being hyped on X by some friendly looking and slightly crypto affiliated accounts
• This tech person is later approached by these friendly crypto bros and is offered a stake in some crypto coin related to the project. The deal is accepted because developer does not want to be holding the ‘bags’ for his initial investment in AI software pump
• Crypto scammers and bots hype and astroturf the new project further in all possible platforms to raise awareness of the project and associated COIN
• Unsuspecting software developers start actually trying out this new software tool and help to amplify the promotion 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 #openforwork 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 and a vibecoded software blob that will be forgotten in a few months (or acquired by AI-rabid corporation if they get lucky!). What is important is that 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!

UPDATE: It came to my attention that creator of Clawdbot (now rebranded as Moltbot) has publicly denounced any crypto coin connections: https://x.com/steipete/status/2016072109601001611 It also seems there is a hivemind of crypto fanatics that twist and turn the hype of anything that trends for their benefit and profit. How much crypto scammers feed the trend itself and help to manufacture it? It is hard to say. This relationship might work even if it is non-consensual.

Crypto might not be directly connected to this specific project but the “pump” cycle of software hype today gets intertwined and amplified by crypto scams, AI influencers, FOMO developers and bots. Agentic coding brings the pump and dump cycle to the software world: fast creation (pumping code with agents), massive amplified hype and sudden exit or project death. My prediction for 2026 is this — we will see many more hype pumps of fresh vibe coded software this year.