Fake News of Walmart Adopting Litecoin Causes Crypto Markets to Pump and Dump Billions in Minutes

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.

Chart by TradingView

• 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.