Busted?  Waltonchain Accused of Orchestrating Fake Valentine’s Day Giveaway

Yesterday, Waltonchain gave themselves away for potentially fabricating the winners of a WTC giveaway.

On February 8th, the supply chain cryptocurrency announced its Valentine’s Day promotional campaign. From the time of the announcement until February 27th, anyone who retweeted the official campaign tweet would have the chance to win free WTC.  The giveaway would split 564.96 between 214 fortunate winners.  

Pretty basic promotional move, right?

Well, things got more complicated and a bit messy after Waltonchain’s official Twitter enthusiastically tweeted its acceptance of one of the prizes.

A few voices spoke out against the slipup on the tweet’s comment section and it was immediately deleted.  Screenshots exist, though, and it wasn’t long until the gaff was posted on r/cryptocurrency.  

In the post, many speculate that the entire raffle was just a PR ruse and that there was never a legitimate contest to begin with.  It’s possible that Waltonchain commissioned an army of fake Twitter handles to enter into the contest, most (or even all) of which eventually reaped its benefits.  An employee in charge of both Waltonchain’s Twitter and some of these fake accounts may have simply failed to log into the right account before announcing his/her excitement.  However, these theories are obviously just conjecture, as any foul play has not been proven nor disproven at this point.

Nonetheless, WaltonChain’s price tanked after the debacle, dropping from $22.55 to $17.42 over the course of February 28th in response to the mishap.  As of press time, the price is resting at just over $19.00.

Today, the Waltonchain team issued an official apology for the incident, but they’re not giving an inch to enable the theories thrown around on Reddit.  Instead, they’re chalking this one up to a simple misunderstanding.  They claim that a team member entered the drawing and won, only to use the wrong profile to announce this victory to social media’s eyes and ears.  They provide a video link that recounts the drawing process in an attempt to exonerate themselves from any fraudulent behavior, and to ensure that nothing like this happens again, they’re barring all employees from any future promotional campaigns.

Waltonchain official response to the recent Twitter incident. #waltonchain $wtc

Video Link: https://t.co/11JtzCJ9PR pic.twitter.com/v0SeJTyp1O

— Waltonchain (@Waltonchain) March 1, 2018

For Waltonchain, it’s quite a stroke of luck that the same victorious employee also had access to the project’s official Twitter.  Certainly, the coincidence is possible, but it’s also highly convenient for their narrative.  Some Reddit users claim to have scoured the retweet section of the original campaign posting, citing that there are numerous red flags for users that appear to be fake accounts.

All things considered, it’s not for us to be judge and jury.  The story, though, is convoluted enough to merit coverage and a dose of healthy skepticism, so if you’re feeling wary, do a bit of digging to either confirm or quell any uncertainty on the matter.