Redditors appear to influence shifts in Tether’s market cap—often suspiciously far in advance.

Sentiment toward dollar-pegged stablecoin tether (USDT) tends to foreshadow shifts in the asset’s market capitalization by up to 12 days before surges. A new study said those price movements are suspicious, and could be the result of  “sentiment manipulation by insiders.

Augmento, a sentiment-analysis research firm based in Berlin, analyzed 93 “sentiment indicators” on Reddit, where USDT is heavily discussed, and discovered that Redditors— bearing good or bad news about the stablecoin—often prefigure corresponding increases or decreases in its overall market cap. 

The benign explanation is that of course Tether sentiment goes up before a market cap increase—that’s why it increases. But the apparent lack of a discernible catalyst, to Augmento, is suspicious. 

Indeed, Augmento believes the sentiment is spread by “fake accounts.” Though the research firm is unable to corroborate this, there’s some circumstantial evidence that suggests it.  For one, leaked messages seem to detail the company’s attempts to drum up positive sentiment on Reddit, or “astroturfing.” And internal records from Bitfinex, Tether’s sister company, show executives at the company fretting over how to combat negative press. 

Crypto ratings company Weiss believes Bitcoin’s technology is prehistoric compared to these two competitors. 

Bitcoin’s share of the market has never been bigger, but cryptocurrency ratings company Weiss Ratings claims there are at least two cryptocurrencies that it finds much more exciting.

In its regular mail out, the Weiss team is hawking a video, “3 Cryptos Better Than Bitcoin.” But you need to be a subscriber to actually find out what they are. Decryptbrazenly asked them to spill the beans.

Juan Villaverde, who leads the Weiss Ratings team of analysts and computer programmers, began with a qualifying statement: “Our position is that there are several distributed ledgers (“coins”) that have more advanced technology than bitcoin’s. However, that may not necessarily make them better than bitcoin overall.”

So, perhaps, not better after all? 

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• Amazon cloud outage causes chaos for crypto exchanges.  
• BitPay blocks $100k donation to Amazon rainforest charity. 
• Circle raises $100 million for crowdfunding arm. 
• Libra members mull quitting project over government pressure. 

As the British High Court grapple with whether Bitcoin counts as legal property, a court has treated it as such in a million-dollar court case.

What you need to know

In a first, the British High Court recognizes Bitcoin as “property,” for now, in an interim judgement on a cryptocurrency hacking case. The decision, though subject to ratification, sets for now a legal precedent in the 800-year-old system, making it easier for victims of hacking to claim cryptocurrencies locked away in exchanges.

The judgment concerns Liam Robertson, CEO of Alphabit, a crypto-fund that manages $195 million, who claimed he was conned out of $1 million worth of Bitcoin last month. London’s Commercial Court issued an Asset Preservation Order that ordered the exchange CoinBase to temporarily freeze stolen funds—meaning that the Court, for the first time, recognized Bitcoin as legal property. 

Why it's important

Robertson said his lawyers plan to use similar courses of actions to get the remaining 15 bitcoins back from LocalBitcoins.com and 5 bitcoins held in the cold wallet. But Jones said that things become more difficult when the stolen funds sit in a wallet that’s not held in an exchange.

If Robertson’s lawyers can’t spook the remaining bitcoins out of the hacker, they’ll first have to identify the owner of the wallet and force them to transfer the funds by way of a court order—a lengthy and, for Robertson at least, costly process.

Bitcoin's market domination 90%? 

Bitcoin's market dominance sits at 69 percent—up from 33 percent at the start of this year—but a new report suggests a more accurate value should be closer to 90 percent.

But, as though dominating such a huge percentage of the market wasn't enough, blockchain analytics firm Arcane Crypto suggests the figure should be even higher. Crucially, it argues that the figure should take into account the liquidity of each cryptocurrency.

By weighting the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies against their trading volume, it was found that Bitcoin actually constitutes more than 90 percent of the market when using trading data from the top 10 reputable exchanges. But that's not all.

Read more here.