This news turned up on Sunday @ 21 hrs on 4Chan. 4chan is an English-language imageboard website where users generally post anonymously. It's seen as a trolls’ paradise but that didn't stop the story. It was used to post a photo of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin along with a story of his untimly demise in a car crash: “Fatal car crash. And now we have our answer. He was the glue. It will be difficult for ETH to recover and the entire crypto sphere is in big trouble.” Ethereum (Eth) which has a current market capital value of €25 Billion fell from $297 sunday to $267 monday which is an 11% difference. It is up as much as 4,000 % this year alone and is the number 2 crypto currency by market capital. It is drawing interest from some serious big players such as Microsoft, Intel, JP Morgan and 30 other big players such as big banks, tech giants, and other organisations who have united to build business focused solutions based on Ethereum. I am sure they are invested to ensure it becomes the blockchain of choice around the world.
Of course , as it was fake news Buterin turned up with this very clever photo on twitter.
It is an image of the latest etherium block that was mined on the blockchain written on a piece of paper. Something similar to what Julian Assange did to prove he too was still alive. For months, some of Assange's fans had commented continuely that he had died. However, Assange responded calling the theories "silly" and confirming that the video was not prerecorded by reading off the most recent block hash on the bitcoin blockchain.
Ethereum is now back where it was on Sunday and has nearly recovered all those losses. There is little doubt that fake news manipulation shows up in society everyday but here it uncovered a weakness in Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin is the brains behind Ethereum, and although it is not directly controled by him, it still plays to the tune of his influence. An influence where comments by him or news on him can have a direct impact on its value.