The Litecoin press release in question originally appeared on GlobeNewsWire and it mentioned that Walmart, one of the largest retailers in the world, would begin accepting Litecoin for online purchases. The official Litecoin Twitter then saw this press release on Twitter and quickly retweeted it to all of their followers. The news spread fast, especially because such a large retailer was involved and the coin quickly spiked over 30% in price as other news outlets begin to break the story on their sites.
Within hours, Walmart issued their own press release stating that this was 100% false. The company does not plan to accept Litecoin, nor is it affiliated with the coin in any way. This led to the 30% increase suddenly becoming a decrease, as people sold of their recent investments in the coin.
Who Released the Fake Litecoin News?
Of course fake news like this was not taken lightly by Walmart, and they ran an internal investigation to find out if it came from any of its employees. The results of this investigation were not released to the press, who are apparently doing their own investigation into their employees as well. Litecoin has specified that its Twitter account is run by someone who isn’t in the know about the brand and the Walmart news was retweeted without a thought. It has since been taken down.
When it comes to fake news like this, these stories are all too common. Although this may be the first one involving Walmart, because news sources can stay anonymous by law in the United States, anyone can “report” about any fact to a news agency. It is then the job of the news agency to check the facts. Clearly, this story about Litecoin and Walmart was not double checked by GlobeNewsWire.
Was There Any Way to Know the Litecoin Story was Fake?
It can be difficult to know just when a news story is fake, especially because there is so little regulation in the space other than the companies involved in the press release complaining after it happens. But often times, if you do a small amount of your own investigating, you can deduce whether or not a particular news story is likely to be true.
This Litecoin press release is a great example, because if you had simply searched ‘Walmart cryptocurrency’ in your search bar, you would find that Walmart is busy developing its own cryptocurrency—a sure sign that they wouldn’t waste time in developing a processing system for Litecoin payments. Additionally, although this story was posted to the Litecoin Twitter, it was not on the Walmart Twitter, and you should know that news this big would definitely be placed in a primary location like this first before spreading to third party news sources.