Waltonchain investors went into panic mode today after the official Waltonchain Twitter account mistakenly replied to their own giveaway announcement saying that they had won. The Valentine’s Day giveaway, which was valued at about $12,500, was meant to attract more Twitter followers to Waltonchain by distributing 2.14 WTC (Waltonchain Tokens) to 214 followers, and 21.4 WTC to 5 followers. After this mishap though, the giveaway ended up having the opposite effect, causing the price of WTC to drop more than 20%.
Soon after the winners were announced, the official Waltonchain Twitter account (@Waltonchain) replied to its own Tweet, thanking the Walton team for their work. This accidental tweet was quickly deleted, but not before being called out by other Twitter users.
This tweet caused cryptocurrency investors to believe that the giveaway was fake, or at least rigged so that some fake accounts owned by Waltonchain would win. It is unlikely that the entire giveaway was faked though, as many of the users appearing on the list are old, active, and genuine looking accounts. The Waltonchain Foundation also holds 20 million of the 100 million WTC in existence, so giving away 565 WTC wouldn’t be a huge expense.
More likely is that some of the winners were shill accounts owned by Waltonchain. By making sure their accounts won, Waltonchain would be able to make tweets from them like the one shown above and help build up hype around their project.
Another theory that has been floating around Twitter and Reddit is that a Waltonchain intern who has access to the official Twitter account entered the competition and won, but forgot to switch back to their personal account before replying. This has not been confirmed by Waltonchain and the intern in question hasn’t come forward, so it’s likely just a rumour.
The Waltonchain team hasn’t made an official announcement on the matter yet, and in fact any mentions of the topic are being removed from their subreddit, and resulting in a ban on their official Telegram. This suspicious and unprofessional behaviour has caused many investors to sell their WTC holdings. Due to this, the price of WTC dropped from $22 to a low of $17.5 in the hours following the tweet. Waltonchain’s market cap has plummeted by $120 million – they may have made one of the most expensive tweets in history!
Update
The Waltonchain team have stated that the tweet was accidently posted by a team member who had entered the giveaway but forgot to switch accounts. Many Twitter users have replied stating their continued scepticism, but hopefully this move will be a step in the right direction for repairing the damage done.
