I went looking for an AI weed vape that gives you bitcoin for smoking

The weed coded vape found me on 4/20, a holiday for cannabis lovers everywhere. The image arrived via Slack with a thumbnail of a man exhaling a plume of steam, captioned with the phrase “Every hit saves Bitcoin.” It claimed to be advertising a device called Gudtrip, and I thought everything about it sounded fake.

So I went looking for him. What I ultimately found, after weeks of research, dozens of emails, and a reporting effort that spanned continents, was somehow even stupider than I could have imagined.

My first port of call was Gudtrip Websitewhich made vape seem like a joke. The company’s description of the product was tech buzzword bingo — this wasn’t just a vape device that offered bitcoin, it was the “first cannabis proxy device” that combined “premium cannabis, blockchain rewards, and AI-powered asset tools in one product.” This alleged device isn’t just riding on the cryptocurrency hype: AI is now in the mix as well.

But I did find one sign that the product is real. The site said its e-cigarettes were available in California, with New York also listed as “coming soon.” And there was a brand name behind it: swollena company that bills itself as the maker of the “world’s first smart vape device” for nicotine. Somehow, it’s supposed to induce nicotine cessation through a mechanism I don’t understand, like Goodtrip.

I went to Gudtrip’s social accounts to search for more. The product seems to be soft Fired In March. Other than that, most of the posts reiterated that by using Gudtrip, you will get some Bitcoin. Gudtrip’s pinned post is on X as of this writing reads, “Smoke weed and earn @Bitcoin.” last he asks: “Hey New Yorkers, are you ready to smoke weed and earn Bitcoin?” In Topics, Gudtrip posted on “Build wealth one lump at a time” and He explained That users can “⁡earn Bitcoin from every puff”. to throb Tik Tok video He described vape as “an ecstasy that pays you money.”

That was enough to convince me that the product might be real. This was, in a way, shaping up to be a real vape. But I didn’t understand at all how it worked. Does vape mine bitcoin? I emailed Gudtrip to find out.

Goodtrip didn’t respond to me right away, so I started looking for more. On LinkedIn, I found one.”Revo T, He is listed as CEO of Gudtrip, “a premium cannabis brand that turns consumption into an on-chain profitable experience.” He wrote Blog post to impress dispensaries To store these vapes. “The product sells itself,” he wrote. “Bitcoin makes sure customers remember where they got it from.”

Weed is legal in California, but the products are subject to regulation. So I asked the California Department of Cannabis Control, which licenses and regulates commercial cannabis activity in the state, whether it allows products that reward consumption. Jordan Traverso, the department’s deputy director of public affairs, said the agency had not heard about Gudtrip’s AI-encoded vape. “We were not familiar with the Gudtrip product before but reached out to the manufacturer to learn more about its features,” he wrote. This made two of us.

At this point, I had reached the limit of what I could do from London. So I asked my American colleagues for help. Gudtrip claimed it was available in California at exactly two stores. A colleague happened to be in the area to wander by the dispensary to see once and for all: Does this vape really exist?

When you walk in a door NUG Cannabis Dispensary In Auckland, we found the answer: a huge poster from Gudtrip instantly promised customers “continuous crypto rewards over time.” It was clearly written: “Get Ecstasy. Get Bitcoin.”

And obviously we bought it. The AI ​​weed vape costs $67 after tax.

That was also when Goodtrip responded – and somehow, things got murkier.

The “paying people to smoke weed” sounded very attractive, but it didn’t seem entirely legal. (It doesn’t sound particularly healthy, either. Researchers Talk to the encoder port DL News Encouraging daily use could be dangerous and habit-forming, he said.)

It turns out that Goodtrip agreed. When I asked Gudtrip what vaping actually does, how rewards work, and how the company is responding to criticism that it’s encouraging people to consume cannabis for cryptocurrencies, Gudtrip’s chief technology officer, Rishi Komori, emailed a few numbered paragraphs. The phrase that caught my attention the most: “It is actually illegal to offer financial incentives for every type of consumption, etc. in any form.”

Despite what Gudtrip, the no I give you Bitcoin for vaping.

“Bitcoin reward is separate from consumption,” he wrote. “It is paid upfront upon activation, per customer, and does not change with duration of puff, number of sessions, daily usage, or lines. A customer who never uses the device after activation receives the same reward of $2-$60 worth of Bitcoin as someone who uses it regularly. This is a standard mechanic for consumer loyalty – Bitcoin instead of points – and Bitcoin is a commodity under SEC and CFTC classification. We are confident that the structure complies with cannabis regulations in every market we operate in.”

So, you don’t “earn Bitcoin on every puff”? A Video on the company’s website It states that “every inhale syncs with your phone and earns Bitcoin and godtrip points in real time” – but doesn’t it actually do that? Because that would be illegal?

Gudtrip app made the situation even more confusing. When a colleague went to download it via the QR code on the sticker at a NUG Oakland dispensary (it was offered via TestFlight, rather than Apple’s App Store), the download page promised something else. The preview screenshot clearly stated that the app rewards puffs on the vape – not with cryptocurrency, but with Gudtrip points. What are Goodtrip Points? What can they be replaced with? We’ve reached out to Gudtrip again for clarification.

A second email from Komori confirmed, with some urgency: “The main point we want to make sure is clear is that Gudtrip’s Bitcoin reward is tied to activation, not consumption.” And again, you don’t get rewarded for puffing! “Gudtrip Points are a separate, cashless loyalty system that is tracked within the app. They are not blockchain rewards and cannot be redeemed for cash, cryptocurrency, or cannabis products.”

The contradictions were accumulating.

Komori had an explanation for this: “The puff dots shown in that screenshot were an old feature ported over from our other smart device products… and this is no longer a feature we currently offer.” What about “continuous crypto rewards over time”? Well, this “points to our future portfolio management feature in the app.” Yes, the app also aims to provide investment planning for your cryptocurrency portfolio.
So, the points-per-puff system is an old feature that no longer exists, and AI for cryptocurrency portfolio management doesn’t actually exist yet. What does this actually do again, besides the obvious?

The only way to know what a vape actually did is to finally use it. However, our ethics policy prohibits us from owning cryptocurrency individually, so we registered a simple Bitcoin account. Our legal team discourages us from writing about questionable legal drug use, so we also requested an automatic liquid extraction pump to simulate puffing a vape.

When linking a vape to the Gudtrip app, we were rewarded with $2 worth of Bitcoin. So far, so good. But will there be more when we smoke?

As another colleague pumped the e-cigarette into the extractor, the arched progress bar within the app filled up. Points are tabulated. He pumped out more than 20 seconds of daily tokens that were “recommended” for “our health,” but no bitcoins were distributed beyond the initial amount. There are separate, dedicated app pages for tracking your current prize value and token accumulation history, but to get another $2 to $60 worth of Bitcoin, you’ll need to purchase a new $67 disposable vape device. That’s how they get you.

Meanwhile, as we emailed back and forth with Komori, several social media posts appeared to disappear from Gudtrip’s accounts, though it’s not clear what posts may have been removed or why they were removed. Indexed posts on Google — which when clicked indicate posts are unavailable — indicated that one was a TikTok video that used the phrase “invest while you blow,” while another was of an Instagram post that contained the phrase “every hit earns crypto.”

A look at the Wayback Machine reveals that Gudtrip also changed its website to weaken the connection between smoking and earning cryptocurrencies. A snapshot from mid-April shows an image of a phone with the Gudtrip app open, with the phrase “Every swipe earns crypto” prominently displayed below the company logo. Today, the phone with the app still exists, but the space under the logo is empty. The company is definitely trying to hide the original idea – Toke coin for Bitcoin, or sorry, Toke coin and Get Bitcoin?

After all that, my question was answered: vape was real. But you won’t actually get Bitcoin with every strike.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister.