Waltonchain made waves throughout the digital currency community yesterday, following the team announcing a partnership with “smart city founders,” Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud is a subsidiary of Alibaba, one of the world’s largest international internet companies. However, Waltonchain has since removed evidence of the partnership announcement.

While previously rumoured, Waltonchain took to Twitter to officially declare their partnership with Alibaba, linking to an accompanying post on Medium dated March 6th, 2018. The announcement enthused both advocates of the WTC digital currency and speculators, with the currency’s price increasing over 30% in a single day.

Although the post on Medium is still currently accessible, today the team’s official Twitter account took down the announcement tweet, and are yet to provide clarification on the partnership’s authenticity.

Waltonchain once again finds difficulty communicating

“Alibaba Cloud signs Strategic Partnership to use Waltonchain in Smart City development across China,” read the now-deleted tweet.

After deleting the Tweet, the account posted what many have since criticized as an unclear message, with the team citing a “current uncertainty of blockchain policies,” yet providing little in terms of elaboration.

Due to the current uncertainty of blockchain policies, our team has decided that in the future we will announce major partnerships depending on the situation so as not to affect the real implementation of blockchain technology. #Waltonchain $wtc — Waltonchain (@Waltonchain) March 7, 2018

A large portion of the digital currency community are in a state of confusion regarding the status of the claimed partnership between Waltonchain and Alibaba. As of March 7th at 3 PM EST, Waltonchain has not provided any further information or expressed in clear terms if the partnership will proceed as previously claimed.

What in the hell does that mean?? Can you be a little more vague? — Josh (@joshua1mike) March 7, 2018

Further, Alibaba remains silent on the topic. The tech giant has not engaged with the news since it broke yesterday. This means that all accounts of the Waltonchain and Alibaba Cloud partnership are sourced from the Waltonchain team.

Waltonchain’s dramatic news cycle

The news follows a report last week that Waltonchain announced itself as the winner of its own Twitter contest, purportedly due to an employee forgetting to switch accounts before praising the team.

Overall, this marks a dramatic news cycle for Waltonchain (WTC), with its valuation seeming to reflect the surrounding media coverage. WTC dropped in value significantly last week in a crash following the previous Twitter scandal. With its claimed partnership with Alibaba, however, WTC recovered and prices rose over 30%. At the time of writing, the price of WTC is once again dropping following the tweet’s removal.

The community awaits further explanation

Overall, both critics and advocates await further explanation from the Waltonchain team, and/or hope that Alibaba will verify or denounce the partnership’s legitimacy.

While the vocal majority are insistent on questioning Waltonchain’s intent in posting and removing the tweet, some advocates insist that the partnership will proceed as previously advertised.

1/ The partnership between @Waltonchain and @AlibabaGroup (Ali Cloud) is real. Reason why they deleted the tweet is because China gov told $WTC that partnership announcement is too sensitive. $WTC will be involved throughout Chinese society @ #OneBeltOneRoad initiative. Just wait — lambosonmars (@lambosonmars) March 7, 2018

Ultimately, it is not known if Waltonchain actually partnered with Alibaba Cloud at this time. The uncertainty, though, has not prevented a volatile market following Waltonchain’s announcement, which could have harmed several investors. As a result, many stress the importance of clear communication from major projects like Waltonchain, and the community awaits further insight into the team’s motives.

Image credit: Waltonchain logo

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