【Osawa Yuka Archives】

It happened again.

A fake press release fooled cryptocurrency evangelists,Osawa Yuka Archives investors, and media outlets into believing the grocer would be accepting crypto as a form of payment at its stores.

On Friday morning, headlines startedpopping up claiming that the grocery store chain Kroger was going to allow customers to pay in-stores using an alternative cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash.

A screenshot of the fake press release on PR Newswire. Credit: screenshot

The news was based on a release, Kroger to Accept Bitcoin Cash This Holiday Season, published by PR Newswire, a major press release distributor. The press release even made it across the Bloomberg Terminal, a system used by the financial sector to monitor the latest market moves.

"The Kroger Co. America's largest grocery retailer, announced today that it will begin accepting Bitcoin Cash," read the release. "Starting December 1, 2021, the entire Kroger Family of Stores will accept Bitcoin Cash for all in-store and online purchases."

One problem: The press release was fake. Kroger stores will not be accepting Bitcoin Cash.

"This morning a press release was fraudulently issued claiming to be The Kroger Co that falsely stated the organization will begin to accept Bitcoin Cash," said the company in a statement provided to Reuters. "This communication was fraudulent and is unfounded and should be disregarded."

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The situation was really confusing to those who shared the news, mainly because the press release was actually sharedon Kroger's own website.

How did this happen? According to Kroger, its corporate site automatically pulls its own press releases from PR Newswire. All the forger had to do was get the fake past PR Newswire and then it would automatically appear on the company's official website.

It's unclear how this fake press release was published. It has since been removed from both PR Newswire and Kroger's website.

Mashable has reached out to PR Newswire for more information and will update this piece when if hear back.

It's important to note that Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin. It's a completely separate cryptocurrencythat was formed after a dispute within the Bitcoin community in 2017. As a result of the dispute, one side split from Bitcoin, called a hard fork, creating its own cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin Cash.

The Bitcoin Cash pump and dump as seen on Coinbase. Credit: Mashable screenshot

It's likely that the intent behind the false story was to pump the value of the coin. Bitcoin Cash was hovering around the $600 mark on cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase before the press release was published. After the news hit, its price jumped to around $636. Now that the Kroger's press release has been deemed to be fake, Bitcoin Cash is sitting under $600 again.

If this all sounds familiar, it's because this very same thing happened less than two months ago when a fake press release claimed that Walmart would be accepting Litecoin, another alternative cryptocurrency. After the fake Walmart story hit the newswires, Litecoin's value skyrocketed from $170 to around $230 in a matter of minutes. Litecoin's value soon plummeted back down when the press release was deemed to be fake.

Just like the fake Walmart announcement regarding Litecoin in September, that alone should have been a red flag. Why would these major retailers start accepting cryptocurrency by partnering with anything but the most popular: Bitcoin?

Cryptocurrency scams are certainly not new, but these fake press releases are a sneaky new strategy. And, now that crypto fraudsters know that these fakes work, we'll likely start seeing a lot more.

Related video: How to buy, use, and spend Bitcoin

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