Crypto Today: Bitcoin attempts a recovery, altcoins follow the lead

Here's what you need to know on 

Markets:

BTC/USD is currently trading at $8,650 (+0.6% on a day-to-day basis). The coin has recovered after a short-lived sell-off in the area below $8,500. At the time of writing, BTC is moving within a strong bullish trend amid shrinking volatility.

The ETH/USD pair is currently trading at $221.8 (-0.30% on a day-to-day basis). Ethereum has recovered from the intraday low of $216.09, moving in sync with Bitcoin.

XRP/USD settled at $0.2313 after a dip to $0.2260 during early Asian hours. The coin is down 1.2% in recent 24 hours.

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are aelf (ELF) $0.1001 (+16.5%), Dragon Coins (SNX) $0.1183 (+15.7%) and Ren (REN) $0.0582 (+12.16%), The day's losers are, DxChain Token (DX) $0.0015 (-13.5%),Molecular Future (MOF) $0.6230 (-9.42%) and Synthetix Network Token (SNX) $0.8187 (-7.92%).

Chart of the day:

BTC/USD, 4-hour chart

Market:

A prominent cryptocurrency investor Mike Novogratz explained why Bitcoin failed to perform as a safe haven asset during the recent sell-off on the stock markets. The expert believes it all goes down to mass liquidations of both risky and safe assets.

How did $btc go from being a hedge against bad stuff to getting washed out and trading like a risk asset? When things go from bad, to very very bad like they did last week, investors take leverage down as fast as they can.  They book profits to make up for other losses.  Ouch.

Industry:

Bittrex, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, turned six.  The US-based trading platform was created by a group of security engineers to provide a  safe, secure and reliable tool for exchanging digital assets. The team achieved bi results with over 581 million trades processed and over 9 million trades placed during its lifetime. The company has promised to make a major announcement and break some exciting news on March 9.

Bittrex has grown to become one of the leading digital asset trading platforms which helps power other exchanges around the world. On March 9, we’ll be sharing additional improvements and news that we know you will love, so stay tuned!

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance fell victim of strong critics for a sexists post saying that the company was willing to hire a young and beautiful girl with "big boobs. The post was shared on Weibo by Chief Marketing Officer of Binance, He Yi. Once the negative comments started snowballing, she said that the post was mistranslated from Chinese. 

Regulation:

Judge Judith Gibson from New South Wales (Australia) treated cryptocurrency as security and allowed a cryptocurrency exchange account to be used as security for legal costs. The digital assets will partially cover the legal  expenses of the defendant if the plaintiff loses or withdraw the case. The cryptocurrency community touted it as a landmark case and a legal precedent that might start the process of cryptocurrency legalization.

However, the Judge recognized the volatile nature of the assets and ordered the plaintiff to provide monthly statements for the investment account and notify the defendant's solicitor if the account value drops below $20,000.

The Bank for International Settlements released a research paper on peer-to-peer payments. It contains a report on central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC) that may be used as a safe and convenient instrument of peer-to-peer payments. According to the report:

CBDCs could potentially provide a cash-like certainty for peer-to-peer payments. At the same time, they should offer convenience, resilience, accessibility, privacy and ease of use in cross-border payments.

However, the researches also noted that users would not adopt CBDC systems if they would be less convenient than the current electronic payments.