A hoax that claimed that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin had died led to $4 billion being wiped off the value of the popular cryptocurrency alternative to bitcoin.

The hoax, which originated on 4chan before appearing on the fake news website Vionews (since deleted) claimed that 23-year-old Buterin and 34-year-old Travis Sellmon had died in a multivehicle car crash that injured five people and killed two. As the news spread, the price of Ethereum immediately dropped from $317 to $286 before bottoming out at around $216.

To address the fake news, Buterin himself took to Twitter to prove that he was still alive, complete with a picture of him holding a piece of paper (pictured) that included a hash from the Ethereum blockchain that had been mined after his alleged death. Hashes from blockchain mining operations can’t be guessed as they are only generated at the point of mining, meaning that Buterin could only have obtained the hash if he was indeed still alive when the picture was taken.

The hoax-driven price plunge comes less than a week after an automated trading issue resulted in a “flash crash” of ETH tokens on Coinbase. In that case, a large sell order triggered margin calls and stop-loss orders that saw the price of Ethereum drop from $317.81 to as low as 10 cents until Coinbase put a stop to the trading.

Both cases prove that, like bitcoin before it, Ethereum markets are highly volatile and can be manipulated by those looking to have a laugh or others with more malicious intentions. Despite the blip, Ethereum continues its massive bull run this year with the cryptocurrency up around 4,000 percent since the start of the year, having peaked up 5,000 percent when it hit $407.10 on June 12.

After the hoax scare, the price of Ethereum recovered and was trading at $317.62 as of 10 p.m. PDT.

Photo: Vitalik Buterin