Cryptocurrency Litecoin saw an abrupt rise in prices on Monday due to a news press release about Walmart accepting the crypto as a payment – which turned out to be false.
The release was published via an official and highly authoritative news channel. It said that Walmart would receive payments in all its digital stores via Litecoin cryptocurrencies.
Walmart Debunks Fake News
Walmart later told the American media that the announcement was “not true and fake”.
However, by that time, many other news websites and media organizations had spread the word which later turned out to be false.
The announcement also reached Globe Newswire, a service widely used to distribute PR by companies.
The false releases have now been removed.
How Did It Spread?
A tweet from the verified Litecoin Twitter account linking to this PR has also been removed. Hours later, the Litecoin Foundation wrote on Twitter that it did not have such a partnership.
But while it was all being reported, even though false, the price of Litecoin went from £ 125 per token to close to £ 170, before returning back to its original price of about £ 128.
Globe Newswire said “a fraudulent user account was used to issue an illegitimate press release”.
“This has never happened before,” the company said in a statement.
It did not specify what went wrong or who was behind the fake release.
‘Pump And Dump’ Crypto Schemes
But so-called “pump and dump” activities are not uncommon in the cryptocurrency world – when some mischievous players try to increase the hype around a coin, thereby increasing its price, and quickly sell their stock before the market stabilizes.
The fake PR story contained statements that appeared to come from both Walmart CEO and founder of Litecoin.
One clue to its nature was that a press contact email address pointed to a web domain which had been registered only last month. Emails to that address bounced as undeliverable.
