Questionable: USA’s Walmart to accept Litecoin LTC for Online Payments

Major retailer, Walmart (NYSE:WMT) will accept the cryptocurrency Litecoin (LTC) as a form of payment, from 1 October 2021, according to a news story reported by Reuters on 13 September.

UPDATE: while reported by Reuters news agency, this story is believed to be untrue.

Starting October 1st, all eCommerce stores will have implemented a ‘Pay with Litecoin Option’,” Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said – according to Reuters. This quote was confirmed to have been from a fake press release.

Following the news, the price of LTC leapt up roughly 30%, to around USD $230 per unit, before retracting back to prices in the region of USD $190, and then falling to below $180.

However, according to journalist Kate Rooney, this story was fake:

https://twitter.com/Kr00ney/status/1437421511195901952

In a week where there have been several large downwards movements for many cryptocurrencies, this type of apparently fraudulent news event will see voices calling for more regulation grow ever louder. The event also shows what would likely happen, were a major retailer to adopt a cryptocurrency for transactional purposes.

The official Litecoin Twitter account initially ReTweeted the original and apparently fake press release, but later this Tweet was deleted.

What do you think? Leave a moderated comment, below.


In This Story: Kate Rooney

Kate Rooney is a technology reporter based out of CNBC’s San Francisco bureau, with a focus on financial technology, payments and venture capital.

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In This Story: Litecoin

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency that was designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.

The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors. Litecoin has a block time of just 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for micro-transactions and point-of-sale payments.

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