Charlie Lee, executive director of the nonprofit Litecoin Foundation, on Bloomberg TV confirmed that the foundation retweeted a fake news story about a Walmart partnership the day before.
“We are doing our best not to tweet fake news, but this time we really messed up. This has nothing to do with us, and we will try to find out who did this,” Lee said.
On Monday, September 13, a press release on behalf of Walmart announced a partnership with the Litecoin Foundation, under which the retailer would begin accepting the foundation-supported cryptocurrency from October 1. The veracity of the statement drew questions in the community.
The news appeared on Litecoin’s verified Twitter account, but it was quickly removed. However it had already spread to the media, including Reuters, Bloomberg and CNBC.
Both organisations denied the partnership. But in the wake of it, Litecoin’s price rose more than 35%, before tumbling sharply.
“I woke up this morning and found that Walmart was accepting Litecoin, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s cool’. But it turned out to be fake. We did not have a partnership,” Lee commented on the incident.
According to him, Litecoin is “used quite frequently” for payments, and any retailer can start accepting it without prior discussion with the foundation. According to Lee, the daily volume of cryptocurrency transfers is around $3 billion.
He added that forged press releases are occasionally published in traditional markets.
As noted, Litecoin is among the four cryptocurrencies that are supported by PayPal’s digital assets payments service. Since 2020, the service has been available to residents of the United States, and in August 2021 it expanded to the United Kingdom.