Retail giant says it was unaware of the falsely communicated partnership about accepting cryptocurrency, causing a 30% LCT boost.
Fake News Strikes Again
When it comes to cryptocurrency, we have seen plenty of examples of how a single tweet, press release, smoke signals or perhaps even a message in a bottle can cause a specific coin to quickly spike in value.
Well, it happened again and this time it was for the benefit of the popular Litecoin. Although the almost 30% surge may have been short lived, it did cause the value of Litecoin to quickly go from $175.45 to $225.75, before returning to its previous level.
Don’t Believe Everything You Read
As Mark Twain once put it: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting its boots on.” Well, with today’s technology and social media, it goes even faster.
The whole thing started when a seemingly real press release from Walmart reached the media, stating a new partnership between the company and Litecoin.
When one of the world’s largest newswire distribution networks, GlobeNewsWire sends out a press release, people take its word for it. Communicating that the cryptocurrency would be accepted as payment at Walmart’s 10,500 retail venues, starting October 1st, was clearly a huge deal.
Understandably so, customers and Litecoin fans all across the U.S. cheered with enthusiasm over the news and the effect showed immediately. Litecoin shot up like Jeff Bezos’ rocket!
Was it too good to be true? It sure was.
Walmart Denies Any Awareness
After finding out about it, Walmart was forced to put out a statement denying both the partnership as well as any awareness of the press release.
However, it wasn’t fast enough and the damage was already done. Many media outlets had published the information, leading to them having to retract the story as well as their news breaking headlines.
The Litecoin Foundation who had initially re-tweeted the fake release, later had to delete the tweet.
Stay On Your Toes
Lesson learned? Well, these days we have a hard time seeing this never happening again. Surely there were Litecoin fans out there, making a quick buck on this and who knows who will benefit from it the next time. Conclusion, stay on your toes as you never know when the next money making opportunity pops up.
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