Bitcoin Forum

Recently, Litecoin price spiked up and immediately got dumped. If anyone wondering that is because there are rumours spread around about Walmart will accepting Litecoin payments.

The announcement itself was tweeted by the @litecoin Twitter account, then shortly the tweet was deleted.
https://i.imgur.com/arm7EQK.png
Image Source (https://www.forexlive.com/cryptocurrency/!/is-the-walmart-release-about-litecoin-fake-20210913)

What I found interesting is, it shows how the cryptocurrencies market easily got affected by FUD. The Litecoin prices moved significantly, while on another hand Walmart stock price is barely affected.

https://i.imgur.com/rrZ10d1.png


I wonder why would such an unverifiable unverified announcement got released. Does anyone know why that happening? Does the Twitter account got hacked or something?

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Source: Is the Walmart release about Litecoin fake? Yes it is. (https://www.forexlive.com/cryptocurrency/!/is-the-walmart-release-about-litecoin-fake-20210913)

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UPDATE:

It is obvious that such fake news is produced for the sole purpose of making a profit. It is quite possible that someone sold off LTC at a higher price before the subsequent decline. It is surprising that litecoin acted as a locomotive, after which the price of major cryptocurrencies, such as BTC and ETH, increased.

Lucky are those who had sold it during the high prices but such fake news should be curtailed as it is completely misleading and has a big impact later on. For a short during the prices rose suddenly but as it was confirmed about fake news, market fell more than what it has risen.

That's a nasty looking chart hehe. Those responsible for releasing that fake information must be laughing while cashing out their profits.

It was an irresponsible act by their social media team. I bet that their heads probably rolled when it was found out that it's false information. They should be an example of the famous phrase "Do not trust but verify".

The guy who handle litecoin twitter account must be ashame with it. It's destroying the credibility of litecoin. The question is how possible litecoin community didn't even try to confirm it to the walmart directly before try to spread the fake news.
It seems like a human error and the guy was has been handling litecoin twitter account might be forgot to check it before try to publish it on its official account. This is hurting the reputation of litecoin so much.
It's something that must not be done by a big coin like litecoin. A mistake that must not be made. People may still talk about this fake partnership. I don't believe if the twitter account gets hacked.
This must be the fault that already made by admin of litecoin account itself.

Litecoin will rise back to $240. It has to rise because its chart is good enough. The fake news is a test for the next real pump of Litecoin. It would last longer than this one.

Anyone says Litecoin chart is not good to buy and hold, wait for pumps, please let me know. You can laugh at me but you should know I am not Litecoin enthusiast. It is from chart perspective that is good enough.

Many investors have profited a lot after this fake news of Litecoin was published again many investors have suffered a lot of losses. But one thing I don't understand yet is that the Twitter account of Litecoin. wasn't really hacked. No one has yet been informed on behalf of Lite Coins whether their accounts were actually hacked. I hope crypto whales publishing a fake news, they've taken benefits from litecoin.

That is plausible! We all know cryptocurrencies market are still early, and it is prone to PnD scheme and also insider trading.

As you can see in the referred source of my OP. The original articles^{[now the article has been removed]} which @litecoin refer are debunked. The contact information in which the news took place is vague, and highly it is made only for scams, I think. You can see here (https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/png3bf/the_litecoin_and_walmart_partnership_is_fake/), some users on Reddit made an investigation.

I started to think that it is probably a well-planned action made by someone to deceive the market.

Anyway, The litecoin Foundation made a tweet about it:

But I believe they need to publish a press release about how can such acts happen.

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It might be! But it does not close the possibility it's a planned attempt.

this is really surprising. what did LTC do by making fake posts like that? just to get a pump? and make a bad case for the LTC market?
So far, has there been no further confirmation from LTC's social media accounts? usually after a case like this, there will be a confirmation that an account has been hacked. :D

This fake news give us 2 things 1 is push the litecoin price up and second about fud news. And we know that in crypto market fake news is like a matter of things. And news gone viral in a moment. Which is happen with the litecoin too. I think litecoin do it with intentionally and litecoin gets their result but they should understand that when people got exact news and saw you are using wrong marketing strategy which give litecoin a bad marks. I don't think negative marketing works for long. Its a short Marketing success theory. But posetivity take time but stay longer. I hope other project learn from it.

No, it was a planned action and to achieve this effect, the scammers created a fake WALMART website, which was registered on 2021-08-17. It was on this domain that fake news was published, which was not thoroughly checked by @litecoin employees, who considered this news reliable. This is exactly the investigation that Skilhgt conducted, publishing it in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/png3bf/the_litecoin_and_walmart_partnership_is_fake/

If it has been announced by the official Twitter account of Litecoin then whoever handles that account should be accountable for its fake tweet about Litecoin's partnership with Walmart. I remember the same rumor, not an actual announcement but only a rumor but made the market good about Amazon's stand and adoption of cryptocurrencies. I think that was just a month ago or two when that rumor came and it made the market a bit of pump and then later Amazon denied the rumor.

https://i.imgur.com/h0A9ia2.png

Look how the chart of LTC/USDT. Hahahaha. A lot of people got rekt here for sure after this fake news spread, in just minutes we saw a lot of liquidation on Litecoin.
as what vv181 said, Litecoin Foundation already has a statement on what happened. Major problem here was the official Twitter account of  Litecoin shared a link of fake news partnership with Walmart.

^This is funny, lol.

This is probably somebody who has an enormous bag of LTC has just decided to spread a rumor and try to dump it ASAP. Lol. Just in a matter of hours, it almost came back to the original price. Imagine how easy it is to excite a particular coin from an official Twitter account of a massive company. Someone has been fired for this for sure.

Maybe the handler of the Twitter account wasn't in the loop with all the plans of Walmart, and once there is news about it, they just publish it.

Regardless of whether it is the cryptocurrency market or the stock market spot market, there will be behaviors that take the opportunity to speculate for profiteering. In this market, giant whales and investment institutions will always make money.

In the first place who told the public Walmart will use Litecoin? Much better to get the source from the walmart social media first before believing. Personally I do not believe the news the first time I heard Facebook will create its own crypto until I found it on its own website. Get the credible source first before believing.

Do you mean unverified? The announcement was indeed unverified but it was definitely verifiable. A simple call would have made everything clear. It was incompetence on the part of Litecoin's Twitter handler to just post something which is not even confirmed. It should have been a basic responsibility to verify rumors or reports. Failure to do such basic thing gives a bad name to the brand.

This is a proof that buying the rumor and selling the news is still working out even in a different way. Lol.

Thanks for that interesting information i have not heard of that before and now it makes total sense why litecoin made such big price movements recently. It is totally weird to me that the official litecoin Twitter account posted this fake statement and it would be very interesting to know how this could happen, if the account was hacked or if an employee just made a big mistake or did it on purpose for whatever reason. It is not really surprising, that this caused the price of litecoin to pump and dump.

I agree that it was very deliberate, and they target Walmart because they know that this company is huge and making them in front of the headlines make people not to worry and check the veracity of the news.

But it is now debunked, let this be another great example for newbies not to fall for this kind of trap, otherwise if they invested on the top, damn, another big lost for them. Good for those who was able to cash out and get their profits though. This is a cat and mouse game, and those who survived are those who know how to play not by the rules, sad to say.

I've updated OP, The foundation released the official statements. They claim Reuter did it first which make @Litecoin admin releasing the news. All we know for sure is the linked sources are all linked to Global Newswire.

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Gee, What a chart! ;D

Anyway, Charlie Lee also already speaks about the incident on Bloomberg(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_pFX3_Czn8)

Yeap, wrong choice of word.

Exactly, it's kinda like a PnD scheme, isn't it?

There are many such acts of using fake news to manipulate the market. If someone can make a table of all the price fluctuations caused by fake news, I guess this table will be very interesting.

Or where can I get comprehensive "fake news"？

Wow, I hope this wont open pandoras box and we will see similar fake announcements which would lead to pump and dumps as we saw it today. Its hard for me to think that wont be the case.
It is scary to see how far people will go to get some fraudulent quick money.

I'm curious what happened to those investors who bought at the peak of it :D. Are they holding still right now. Did they sold at a loss. The picture is very funny TBH :D.

I saw this news also in one of my crypto news application on my phone. It sent me a notification regarding this but I simply ignored it because I don't hold any Litecoin TBH but when I saw that this partnership was fake, I laughed and thinking what happened to those investors who got FOMO'ed :D.

TBH, this decreases the reputation of the project. These fake partnership might have long term effects to the project itself. Investors might lose some trust with the coin because they are spreading fake information and fake partnerships. I just hope that those who are trusting Litecoin will not go away and will stay in trusting the project.

I have been around for almost 10 years in the cryptocurrency sector, and I can say with 100% surety that this is not the first time I am witnessing such an incident. There is some sort of tolerance in the world of cryptocurrency towards fake news. I have seen established crypto-news portals such as Cointelegraph churning out fake news at a rate of 1 article per hour. Since they use fake news mostly for the purpose of clickbait, we don't usually complain about it. But here, fake news was used to manipulate the market. That is a different topic altogether.

Yes, the price was affected really huge like around $60. But after it turns out to be a false alarm, the price went down to its usual levels. It was actually nice to hear that Walmart started accepting Litecoin payments first. It would be a nice addition for Litecoin's adaption process. As far as I know, Litecoin is not too popular among the other cryptocurrency payment methods or I may be wrong about it.  ;D

I'm surprised at how quick the price went back to normal even with this coordinated pump. Imagine if Charlie et al. went along with the scam, the pump would be massive! One thing for sure is that they should fire their twitter PR guy. The coordinated pump with fake news was disappointing, but how people not falling into the scams giving us the sign that the community is more scam resistant nowadays.

After the price spike to the high price, no wonder is back to the lower price and get a red candle because if the news is real, that can give Litecoin another good time to lift the price. But Litecoin still has a chance to increase, especially if the bitcoin price can back to the high price so we can hope that the next news will be real and that can trigger the price to increase. But congratulations to people who already sold their Litecoin at the last pump and I am sure they will wait for the next pump ;D

I was more surprised that mainstream media are also publishing the story about walmart accepting LTC without  verifying its authenticity. Coindesk also did the same thing even the Litecoin official twitter tweeted it about it when the news wasn't even coming from wallmart itself.

They were all disappointed when walmart itself said its not true. Of course its  true. Why in the world will they choose LTC when there is BTC?

Negative issues are common in cryptocurrencies, we shouldn't be surprised because since bitcoin has been around since 2009 there has been a lot of negative news about cryptocurrencies aimed at giving pressure and fear to crypto owners, even though Wallmart confirmed this information but this has no impact on Litecoin, instead the price goes up about 3%.

We do not even have to go back to when we started, there was a talk about how amazon will accept bitcoin just recently and this sudden push was around those times as well. Amazon said that it was wrong but the price was already high. I can't say that I am too upset over the fake news like these, they may not be ideal but they surely do end up making the prices change a lot and that is a good thing, I personally rather see that then anything else.

Sure, it would be awesome if amazon accepts bitcoin and walmart will have a partnership with litecoin, that itself would be awesome but I rather have fake news like these than no news at all since it works for me. Normally fake news are bad but in this case they do help us get the prices higher so why would be mad about something that is benefiting me? I hope there are more of these in the future as well.

The fake news was published by Twitter @litecoin without verification, as it was posted on a fake website Walmart, whose domain was specially registered for this scam. I wrote about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359767.msg57931574#msg57931574 You need to be prepared for the fact that now they will try to repeat a similar scam with other coins.

While I was reading the OP's post, i also had the same thought that some Probably did this on purpose, to enable them(if they are a group) or him or her sell their litecoin at a very higher price, what ever be the case, lucky were those who sold their litecoin at the peak of the flash pump and sorry to those who bought it at that peak as well, hopefully, the entire crypto market will recover very soon and they get to sell at even a higher price than they bought it.

It is because they know that even showing fake news, will make the market move to their likings.

Well, just consider every news that comes out with known and unknown sources to be verified first. That's my take to it that it should be validated first so that it will be known if it's fake or not.

We couldn't be sure about this. But I think Litecoin developers are not directly involved in this if this was indeed a planned pump and dump scheme. Litecoin is unlike many shitcoins that are just pump and dump coins. Litecoin is certainly more than that.

Although it was a mistake on the part of Litecoin to just publish what is clearly an unverified report taken from Reuters, they showed that they haven't the slightest of intention of misleading the public with that fake news.

My gad. It's a shameless attempt so basically, it was organized. Not sure if they can investigate point who did this but it's destroying the reputation of cryptocurrency when they do this. Those who are trying to join to seize some LTC quickly to make a profit must have been punked.

LTC dev might not be involved in it. But I think whoever put a big sell wall during that time is part of it.

I disagree 100%.

You are essentially saying that you are fine with market manipulation using fake news, as long as it benefits you. This is plain wrong. How can you be sure that it will remain beneficial in the long run? IMO, it will scare away many potential investors, including institutions. And when someone is manipulating the market and gaining from it, on the other side there will be someone who is losing money. This can be some noob who has just made his investment with cryptocurrency, or some experienced trader who made a mistake in investing when the prices are high.

very true what you say. Fake news will actually frighten new potential investors. even for those who have entered the project. Even though I haven't made a profit, I think trust in the project must have been flawed.
something bad has done LTC. this definitely has an impact also for their long term market.

i thought it was genuine but seeing walmart as the biggest retailer in america if want to make payments via crypto i think i would choose btc as the main one. however since this news is fake it seems that some parties are using it to take short advantage.

Since Walmart's embrace of crypto intentions has also been shared recently and as a result, this fake news is almost true for most crypto users, it must also be acknowledged that the person who came up with this source is actually a person who skillfully stitches together the smallest Walmart interactions to incorporate a Walmart related photo in this fake pump event. Litecoin holders have suffered a painful slip-up in this scheme, but perhaps a bit of the reverberation is a re-polishing of Litecoin's hinges.

Obviously fake.  Can't believe litecoin actually pumped over that.  All ypu had to do was look for a Walmart announcememt and there was none. Crappy part is some people lost some sizable money on that fake news pump.  If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.  Why would they choose litecoin over bitcoin anyway?

Perhaps because Litecoin has a lower transaction fees and faster confirmations? Also, Litecoin is the oldest cryptocurrency for which there is an active community as far as I know.

Creating fake news to pump the price of a certain coin, isn't something new in crypto market. This fake news about Litecoin Partnership is only one of the examples of various fake news created by some people to take profits instantly. Because lately tweeter becomes a trending place for crypto news after it was used by Elon Musk to boost Doge price, some people have an idea to create fake news through some tweets on Twitter. I am not surprised to know this, many crypto users keep their eyes on Twitter now. Anyway, we must appreciate that Litecoin Foundation has made a clarification to let people know the fact.

Agreed, with the huge cashflow on the Walmart, choosing BTC with its Lightning Network seems more reasonable than suddenly using LTC. Of course some people would take that opportunity to gains profit after realizing that something wrong on the news.

Walmart, Amazon, and I expect more known companies to be used for personal interest and to scam people. It was too sad that many people just trust news like this but neglected to visit the official site for the said announcement. Nowadays, it was easy for the scammers and create such unreliable sources of information to get some attention and use that tool for their evil plan.

As usual, rumor is raised to pump a coin and this moment is utilized by certain parties to get profits.
And once they have, the rumor will be broken by the person concerned, in this case, Walmart.
I feel sorry for the coin buyers who are trapped in a pump and dump flow like this, especially when they buy when the price is high.
But moments like this will never end. There will be other rumors that will be raised, associated with other world-class high-ranking companies, the world's top institutions, as well as certain countries.
And because of this, we should not easily believe in rumors. only, if we can take advantage of the rumor at the right moment, we can benefit, but not for the long term if it's still just a rumor.

Yea, there is no concrete proof. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, the fake domain that GlobeNewswire cited is a month old, it shows there are intentions about this, it might be a planned action. There must be some mastermind behind all of this.

We had to give the benefit of the doubt to the Litecoin Foundation, the Foundation also already denies it. As you say, we can't know for sure about this since all of eyes are going to GlobeNewswire, the one who started the news.

I don't think the Litecoin Foundation had anything to do with this. If they wanted to do a pump and dump or rug pull, they wouldn't have waited until now; they have had plenty of opportunities to do so in the past. According to GlobeNewswire, they plan to request and facilitate a full investigation with the appropriate authorities, which should hopefully lead to the discovery of the perpetrator.

"When GlobeNewswire became aware this morning that a fraudulent user account was used to issue an illegitimate press release we promptly withdrew the press release and issued a Notice to Disregard. This has never happened before and we have already put in place enhanced authentication steps to prevent this isolated incident from occurring in the future. We will work with the appropriate authorities to request – and facilitate – a full investigation, including into any criminal activity associated with this matter," the company said in a statement provided to FOX Business.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/globenewswire-walmart-litecoin-fake-fraudulent-user-account

Walmart attorneys need to be all over this… someone falsely and intentionally represented the company and what makes this even worse is that it fooled so many news outlets which in turn leads to many more people getting fucked over.

I hope they move forward and clear the smoke up on who is up to this bs.