The LTC rate jumped to $ 240 and soon fell back after the appearance of false data about the alleged readiness of the American retail chain Walmart to accept LTC. Walmart and Litecoin have denied this information.
Initially, a press release about the Walmart-Litecoin partnership was posted on the Global Newswire website, which various companies provide materials for publication. The press release indicated that Walmart will begin accepting Litecoin as payment starting October 1. The material contained quotes from the Walmart CEO and the founder of Litecoin. With false information spreading quickly through news outlets, LTC jumped from $ 173 to $ 240.
The suspicion was that the press e-mail address pointed to a domain that was registered last month. Messages to this address are not delivered. Correspondents of the CNBC channel decided to contact by phone representatives of Walmart, who denied the published data, which Walmart later reported to other American media outlets.
A fabricated press release about Walmart’s partnership with Litecoin has been removed, as has a tweet citing inauthentic material on behalf of a verified Litecoin account. A few hours later, the Litecoin Foundation also denied its partnership with the commercial giant on Twitter. As a result, the LTC rate returned to almost the same level, to $ 178. It is still unknown who was behind this false information. Apparently, someone was trying to raise a fuss around Litecoin and “inflate” the price of this cryptoasset. The “pump and dump” scheme worked successfully, although the jump was short-lived.
In 2020, Walmart joined the Hyperledger consortium to experiment with blockchain across a variety of industries. Last month, it was revealed that Walmart was looking for a head of cryptocurrency product development.
