The cryptocurrency Litecoin rose in price by up to 20% after a fake press release that claimed Walmart had started accepting it as payment.
According to Arabiya Net, the press release was published via GlobeNewswire, which is linked to a non-functioning site, and there was no evidence of any filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is What has been expected since Wal-Mart went public.
The official Walmart newsroom did not include the release, and the company usually uses Business Wire to distribute the releases.
Many news outlets published reports based on the deceptive press release, and shortly afterwards the price of Litecoin jumped, along with those of other cryptocurrencies, before quickly retracing to levels Previous.
It is not yet clear who might be behind the deceptive press release, but Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove confirmed that the news announcement was fake. He also said that the retailer is in contact with the news company to investigate how the statement was published, the Arab Gateway for Technical News reported.
The cryptocurrency - up 33% at one point - has lost almost all of its gains. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, is down 2% after earlier rising nearly 4%.
Other digital assets also fell, with Bitcoin Cash, Ether and EOS all dropping.
The news spread quickly across Twitter, and crypto-supporters were elated to see another big name behind the movement. This is despite the fact that they questioned why Walmart is partnering with a lesser known and less used cryptocurrency than Bitcoin.
The story went from very good news for cryptocurrencies to being a problem across the industry in a matter of minutes. The threat of market manipulation has been one of the main points that regulators focus on these assets, and this is attracting their attention.
Crypto scams are not new. In the summer of 2020, the Twitter accounts of some of the most prominent political and business leaders in the United States were hacked in an apparent attempt to promote a Bitcoin scam. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett were all targeted as part of this attack.
The effort behind the Litecoin hoax included creating an email address based on a fake domain name. In addition to a fake news release that included quotes attributed to Wal-Mart executives.
While asset-price hoaxes appear in financial markets all the time, cryptocurrencies seem to provide an especially fertile ground for scammers.
