I Searched for the AI Weed Vape That Pays You Bitcoin

The crypto weed vape that supposedly pays you Bitcoin landed in my inbox on 4/20, the unofficial holiday for cannabis enthusiasts. A Slack message arrived featuring a thumbnail of a man exhaling a plume of vapor, with the phrase “every hit delivers Bitcoin” plastered across it. The device was called Gudtrip, and from the start, everything about it felt fabricated.

So I set out to find the truth. After weeks of searching, dozens of emails, and a reporting effort that crossed continents, what I uncovered was even more absurd than I had anticipated.

My first stop was Gudtrip’s website, which only deepened the suspicion that this was a joke. The product description read like a tech buzzword bingo card: this wasn’t just a vape that paid you in Bitcoin; it was “the first agentic cannabis device,” combining “premium cannabis, blockchain rewards, and AI-powered asset tools.” Not only was crypto hype involved, but AI had also been thrown into the mix.

One clue suggested the product was real: the website listed availability in California, with New York marked as “coming soon.” The brand behind it was Puffpaw, a company that markets itself as the maker of the “world’s first gamified smart vape” for nicotine. The idea, somehow, is to incentivize quitting nicotine through a mechanism I still don’t fully understand , similar to Gudtrip.

I turned to Gudtrip’s social media accounts for more information. The product appeared to have quietly launched in March. Most posts simply repeated that using Gudtrip would earn you Bitcoin. The pinned post on X reads, “Smoke weed and earn @Bitcoin.” Another asks, “New Yorkers, are you ready to smoke a joint and earn bitcoin?” On Threads, Gudtrip posted about “building wealth one puff at a time,” explaining that users can “earn Bitcoin from every single puff.” A pulsating TikTok video described the vape as “the high that pays you back.”

This convinced me the product might be real. But I still had no idea how it worked. Did the vape mine Bitcoin? I emailed Gudtrip to find out.

When Gudtrip didn’t respond immediately, I dug deeper. On LinkedIn, I found “Reffo T.,” listed as CEO of Gudtrip, which he described as “a premium cannabis brand turning consumption into an onchain earning experience.” He had written a blog post encouraging dispensaries to stock the vapes. “The product sells itself,” he wrote. “The Bitcoin just makes sure customers remember where they got it.”

Since weed is legal but regulated in California, I contacted the state’s Department of Cannabis Control, which licenses and regulates commercial cannabis activity. Jordan Traverso, the deputy director of public affairs, said the agency hadn’t heard of Gudtrip’s AI crypto vape. “We were not previously familiar with the Gudtrip product but have reached out to the manufacturer to learn more about its features,” he wrote. That made two of us.

At this point, I had exhausted what I could do from London. So I asked my US colleagues for help. Gudtrip claimed to be available in California at exactly two stores. A colleague happened to be near one and could visit the dispensary to confirm: Does this vape actually exist?

Walking into the NUG Cannabis Dispensary in Oakland, the answer was immediate. A massive Gudtrip poster promised customers “ongoing Crypto Rewards over time.” It read plainly, “Get High. Get Bitcoin.”

We bought it. The AI weed vape cost $67 after tax.

That’s when Gudtrip finally replied , and things got even murkier.

The idea of paying people to smoke weed sounded catchy, but it didn’t seem entirely legal. (It also didn’t sound healthy. Researchers speaking to crypto outlet DL News warned that encouraging daily use could be dangerous and habit-forming.)

It turns out Gudtrip agreed. When I asked how the rewards work and how the company responds to criticism about incentivizing cannabis consumption for crypto, Gudtrip’s CTO, Rishi Kommuri, emailed a few numbered paragraphs. The most striking line: “It is actually illegal to offer financial incentives per consumption type and so on in any way.”

Wait, what?

Despite Gudtrip’s website, X account, Threads account, TikTok account, and a giant banner in NUG Cannabis Dispensary, Kommuri now claimed the vape did not give you Bitcoin for vaping.

“The Bitcoin reward is decoupled from consumption,” he wrote. “It is paid upfront on activation, to every customer, and does not scale with puff duration, session count, daily use, or streaks. A customer who never uses the device after activation receives the same reward ($2 to $60 BTC equivalent) as one who uses it regularly. This is a standard consumer loyalty mechanic , Bitcoin in place of points , and Bitcoin is a commodity under SEC and CFTC classification. We’re confident the structure complies with the cannabis regulations of every market we operate in.”

So, you don’t actually “Earn Bitcoin from every single puff”? A video on the company’s website states, “Every inhale syncs with your phone and earns bitcoin and Gudtrip points in real time” , but it doesn’t actually do that? Because that would be illegal?

Gudtrip’s app only added to the confusion. When a colleague downloaded it via the QR code on the poster at NUG Oakland (it was offered through TestFlight, not the Apple App Store), the download page made another promise. The preview screenshot clearly stated that the app rewards puffs on the vape , not with crypto, but with Gudtrip Points. What were Gudtrip Points? What could they be redeemed for? We reached out again for clarification.

A second email from Kommuri reiterated, with some urgency: “The main point we want to make sure was clear is that Gudtrip’s Bitcoin reward is tied to activation, not consumption.” And again, you do not get rewarded for puffs. “Gudtrip Points are a separate, non-monetary loyalty system tracked in-app. They are not blockchain rewards and are not redeemable for cash, cryptocurrency, or cannabis products.”

The contradictions piled up.

Kommuri had an explanation: “The per-puff points displayed in that screenshot was a legacy feature carried from our other smart hardware products … this is no longer a feature we currently provide.” And those “ongoing crypto rewards over time”? That “refers to our future portfolio management feature in the app.” Yes, the app is also meant to offer investment planning for your crypto portfolio.

So the per-puff points system is a defunct legacy feature, and the crypto portfolio-managing agentic AI doesn’t exist yet. What does this actually do, besides the obvious?

The only way to find out was to use the vape. However, our ethics policy forbids us from individually owning cryptocurrency, so we registered a throwaway account for the Bitcoin. And our legal team discourages us from writing about questionably legal drug usage, so we also ordered an auto fluid extractor pump to simulate puffing the vape.

Upon linking the vape to Gudtrip’s app, we were rewarded with $2 worth of Bitcoin. So far, so good. But would there be more as we vaped?

As a colleague pumped the vape into the extractor, the arced progress bar within the app filled up. Points were tabulated. He pumped beyond the 20 seconds of daily toking “recommended” for our “health,” but no Bitcoin was dispersed beyond the initial amount. There are separate app pages to track your current prize value and toke-accumulation history, but to get another $2 to $60 in Bitcoin, you would need to purchase a new, disposable $67 vape. That’s how they get you.

Meanwhile, as we exchanged emails with Kommuri, several social media posts appeared to vanish from Gudtrip’s accounts. It’s unclear what posts were removed or why. Indexed posts on Google , which, when clicked, say the posts aren’t available , suggest one was a TikTok video using the wording “Invest while you puff,” while another was an Instagram post with “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 crypto. A snapshot from mid-April shows an image of a phone with the Gudtrip app open, with “every hit earns crypto” prominently displayed beneath the company logo. Today, the phone with the app is still there, but the space underneath the logo is blank. It sure seems the company is trying to fade out the original idea , toke to get Bitcoin, or sorry, toke and get Bitcoin?

So after all that, my question was answered: The vape was real. But you will not, in fact, get Bitcoin with every hit.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister.