Litecoin founder: With only 20 LTCs, I have no motivation to participate in fake news planning

According to BlockBeats, on September 14, Bloomberg reported that Walmart Inc. has launched an investigation into the fake news that "Walmart announced support for Litecoin payments" that leaked out in the market last night. After the news was released, Litecoin rose by more than 30% in a short period of time.

According to a news release by GlobeNewswire at 9:30 am in New York (9:30 pm Beijing time) on September 14, Walmart will begin allowing its customers to pay with Litecoin. The announcement was also reported by Reuters, CNBC and Bloomberg News, and also pushed Litecoin up 33%, briefly breaking through $230. However, less than an hour later, Walmart quickly denied the announcement, causing the price of Litecoin to plummet and instantly fall back to around $178. Litecoin's official Twitter account also posted a message saying that the announcement was false.

GlobeNewswire is cooperating with authorities in their investigation, "including investigation into any criminal activity related to this matter," according to an emailed statement from Intrado, which operates GlobeNewswire.

"This has never happened before, and we have taken enhanced authentication steps to prevent this isolated incident from happening again in the future," Intrado said. Intrado, which is controlled by Apollo Global Management, issues 200,000 press releases a year, according to its website.

However, what is puzzling is that after the fake statement appeared, the Litecoin Twitter account posted a related message on the network, adding credibility to the news. Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin and managing director of the Litecoin Foundation, said that the tweet has been deleted after announcing that the news was false.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Lee said he only has about 20 Litecoins and has no motivation to participate in such schemes to boost the value of the digital currency. "This is really bad, and we really need to investigate it," Lee said, adding that his foundation's tweet was "really screwed up." He has limited investigative tools and said GlobeNewswire should look into the incident.

Of course, cryptocurrencies are not the only market where bad information can affect prices. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been pursuing individuals who publish false news in recent years. However, the SEC declined to comment.

“Even highly regulated markets like the stock market can be manipulated in this way,” said Jeffrey Timmermans, a professor of business journalism at Arizona State University. “Crypto markets are very volatile and tend to have a lot of retail investor participation, and these people may also participate based on rumor and speculation.”

It is unclear whether this incident will deter major companies from working with cryptocurrencies in the future. Bitcoin use has increased dramatically in recent years, with El Salvador even beginning to adopt it as legal tender, but questions about whether it is susceptible to interference and speculation have fueled skepticism about cryptocurrencies.

But it is foreseeable that companies are preparing for further integration with digital currencies. Earlier this year, Walmart posted a job advertisement on its company website to be responsible for developing "digital currency strategy and product roadmap" and identifying "cryptocurrency-related investments and partnerships."

“To the extent that this is bad for crypto, it happens in the regular stock market as well,” Litecoin’s Lee said. “It’s more likely to happen in the regular stock market than in crypto. But I’ve seen it happen a few times in the crypto space.”