The whole scene of the fake news Walmart – Litecoin shook the crypto market last night

News that the world’s largest retailer Walmart is accepting Litecoin (LTC) payments was posted on GlobeNewswire at 9:30 a.m. (US time) on Monday as the US stock exchange was opening. The price of this coin rose by an impressive 30%.

The announcement was so credible that some of the world’s leading media outlets such as Reuters, CNBC, Yahoo News also reported it a few minutes later. Even Litecoin’s Twitter account (with a green tick) retweeted the GlobeNewswire newsletter as confirmation.

The world’s leading news agency Reuters was also outperformed

However, LTC’s price reversed immediately after Litecoin’s Twitter account abruptly deleted the tweet, and minutes later a Walmart official confirmed to CNBC that the news was fraudulent, bogus, adding that the company is investigating the incident.

LTC 1h Price Chart | Source: Tradingview

“Walmart is unaware of the GlobeNewswire press release, which is fake news. Walmart has no relationship with Litecoin, ”Hargrove, a company spokesman, told CNBC, noting that Walmart’s announcements often use Business Wire to publish but never GlobeNewswire.

As a form of confirmation of the bug, GlobeNewswire then released a statement stating that they had increased their advanced validation steps to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

“We will work with the authorities to enable a full investigation, including all criminal activity on the matter.”, GlobeNewswire said.

Regarding the deleted tweet, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee told Bloomberg, “We have three @ litecoin account managers. Before I woke up one of them read the news on GlobeNewswire and saw Yahoo News, CNBC also reposted it and thought it was real. Not long afterwards he realized his mistake and deleted the tweet. “

“We promise to keep our social media accounts in check so that this doesn’t happen again.” Lee stated, adding that he only owns 5 LTC personally and has little incentive to issue fake announcements to manipulate the price.

An official explanation of today’s false news – Charlie Lee will be live on Bloomberg at 2 p.m. PST today bringing up the topic. pic.twitter.com/x7z7NZ02nZ

– Litecoin Foundation (@LTCFundation) September 13, 2021

Litecoin Foundation press release on the incident

The remarkable thing about this fake news is that it immediately created a pump and dump in the crypto market. The LTC price soared from $ 175 to $ 240 in 15 minutes, then plummeted to $ 180 on suspicion that the news was fake. Of course, the thought leader made a lot of money with this “classic” price manipulation.

In particular, this news does not affect the price of Walmart stock being traded, only the price of LTC.

Securities attorneys say it is very likely that the hoax will lead to a full investigation by the SEC and that the fraudsters will be charged once the regulator has sufficient evidence.

“It’s a misrepresentation about a publicly traded company and the SEC is undoubtedly full of it,” said Andrew Calamari, attorney for Finn Dixon & Herling and former director of the SEC’s New York office.

This scam is also likely to lead to calls for more regulation of the crypto industry, where pump-and-dumping schemes are common. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently called on US Congress to give regulators more authority over the cryptocurrency market.

When asked about the incident yesterday, the SEC declined to comment.

GlobeNewswire is a media services company dedicated to providing businesses with a trusted place to post announcements to the public. GlobeNewswire is owned by Apollo Global Management, which competes with PR Newswire and Business Wire, owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Most major media companies have secure systems that allow companies to submit press releases for publication. After Business Wire was hit by a fake news scandal involving a pharmaceutical company in 2010, Business Wire blocked companies from using email to send them notifications.

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Thach Sanh

Bitcoin magazine

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