The entire cryptocurrency market pumped when news that the US-based e-commerce giant Walmart, has inked a partnership deal with Litecoin to enable its customers to make payment with LTC broke out. Unfortunately, the news appeared to be fake, and the market dumped subsequently.
- According to the fake press release on Monday (September 13, 2021), Walmart shoppers would have soon been able to start making payments with LTC across all eCommerce stores.
- The story was quickly picked up by major news outlets, including Reuters and CNBC, which, ironically, had this in the body before editing it out:
“It was not immediately clear if the news release was actually authentic.”
- Interestingly enough, the sites that picked up the story failed to notice that the impostor credited the press release to Walmart-corpCom, which isn’t related to Walmart Inc. in any way.
- This triggered a marketwide reaction, and most cryptocurrencies pumped tremendously in a matter of minutes. Bitcoin touched $47K, and Litecoin – the hero in the fake story touched $240.
- In aggregate, the entire market added a whopping $80 billion in a matter of minutes.
- Moments later, though, speculations ran rampant that the story is fake,, and it didn’t take long for LTC to plunge.
- The price plunged to $175, and it currently trades around that level. This had the entire market lose about $100 billion in the minutes after.
- It didn’t take long for CNBC and other media outlets to confirm that the story was fake.
- A Walmart spokesperson confirmed that the press release wasn’t authentic.
