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Highlights
- Walmart’s press release announcing a partnership with Litecoin had been declared a hoax
- The fake announcement briefly led to Litecoin jumping nearly 30 percent
A press release from US retail giant, Walmart, announcing a partnership with cryptocurrency Litecoin, had been declared a hoax.
The retailer is looking into how such a slip up could have occurred.
The fake announcement briefly led to Litecoin jumping nearly 30 percent before a spokesman for the company told Reuters that Walmart had no knowledge of the press release issued by GlobeNewswire.
The Litecoin Foundation also posted via Twitter that it had not entered into any agreement with Walmart.
The tweet was later verified by Litecoin’s creator, Charlie Lee.
Litecoin Price
The fake announcement was quickly followed by a significant spike in Litecoin’s price, taking it from around US$174 to US$231 in approximately 40 minutes.
However, the price rebounded back to US$175 almost just as quickly and is currently priced at US$178.54 at the time of writing.
Following Walmart’s announcement calling the press release a fake, GlobeNewswire also published a notice to "disregard" the press release.
Although, GlobeNewsWire made no comment to a query by Reuters on the origin of the fake statement.
Also read: Altcoin Season: When Altcoins Are Set to Explode
What is Litecoin?
Litecoin is a digital currency which was launched in October, 2011 by Charlie Lee – an early adopter of cryptocurrency and former software engineer at Google.
Since its launch, it has exploded in both usage and acceptance alongside Bitcoin – the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
The creation of Litecoin was designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.
It’s Litecoin’s simplicity which has made it the second most popular “pure” crypto behind Bitcoin.
Litecoin’s most attractive features are its speed and cost-effectiveness. Litecoin transactions are usually confirmed in mere minutes, and transaction fees are extremely low compared to other cryptos.
This makes it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin, particularly in developing countries, where a crypto’s transaction fees might be the deciding factor on whether or not an investor puts money into it.
Litecoin has a market capitalisation of US$11,912,984,925, making it the 16th largest ranked digital currency in the world according to CoinMarketCap.
It has a circulating supply of 66,752,614.52 coins with a max supply of 84,000,000 coins.
Interesting Read: Five crypto influencers who are ruling the social media
