Don't Fall For This Fake Walmart Token

Walmart recently announced that it is working with IBM and their produce suppliers to enable transparency and efficiency to its supply chain^[1]. That much is true^[2]. What is completely fake however, is the Ethereum Walmart Token that has been making the rounds.

A few media outlets^[3] fell for it^[4], even published articles about it. We here at CoinJournal didn’t fall for it, but we did still get a kick out of this cleverly designed social engineering scam.

We received the email announcing the new and totally fake token “WAL” from “This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.”. The email felt legitimate. It included an attached press release as well as some links to information about Walmart’s blockchain program.

I started to get a little suspicious however, when I noticed that none of the materials hosted on walmart’s site mentioned the token, only the attached email mentioned it. So I decided to go to walmartprojects.com and see what it was all about. It looked like a legitimate Walmart site exploring their technology focused initiatives. But then I noticed I was no longer on walmartprojects.com, I had been redirected to walmartlabs.com

That was odd, but perhaps they wanted to keep the token secret so they haven’t launched walmartprojects.com yet. So I decided to check into the Whois information. Walmartprojects.com, as well as walmartleafy.com where the supposed token is being sold, were both registered by “This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.” It was a little suspicious that Walmart would have their PR email account register websites. Adding to that suspicion was the fact that both Walmart.com and Walmartlabs.com don’t provide an email address in their whois information.

But what really gave it away was the Walmart token sale itself. Walmartleafy.com offered to sell tokens immediately to