Investing.com – Bitcoin Cash jumped over 6% on Friday morning before dropping back to unchanged on the day after a press release posted on the Kroger (NYSE:KR) website saying that the grocer would begin accepting the cryptocurrency turned out to be fraudulent.
The press release – which remained on the Kroger investor relations page for at least 25 minutes – stated that the supermarket would begin accepting Bitcoin Cash starting 1st December for all in-store and online purchases. The release was also featured on the PR Newswire website.
However, the story turned out to be false, as confirmed by CNBC presenter Dominic Chu.
“CNBC has confirmed with Kroger that the Bitcoin Cash story is fraudulent,” Chu wrote on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).
The fake press release has echoes of another story recently where GlobeNewswire reported that Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT) would begin accepting Litecoin for purchases on its e-commerce site. In a similar move at the time, Litecoin jumped by over 20% before paring gains when it was revealed that the story was fake.
This time, the fraudsters went one step further and managed to get the press release onto Kroger’s investor relations page, making the story appear authentic. Details on how they managed to publish a fake press release on the supermarket’s official website are unclear.
Source: Cryptocurrency - investing.com
