Bitcoin is in red, dropping from recent record-highs

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies retreated from near all-time highs on Tuesday.

Today morning, the world’s largest digital coin fell to $60,000. At 9:26 am London time (4:26 am Eastern Time), the trade price was approximately $60,542, a 5% drop from 24 hours ago.

At the same time, Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell 6% to US$4,229.

The driving force behind the price changes is unclear.

At a press conference on Tuesday, China’s national planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said it would continue to clean up its virtual currency mining.

Earlier this year, China cracked down on Bitcoin mining, leading to an outflow of miners. Mining is an energy-intensive process that creates new coins and maintains all transaction logs of existing digital tokens.

Beijing is concerned about the energy consumed by mining

According to the Beijing government, mining “causes a lot of energy consumption and carbon emissions”. Meng Wei, a spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission, added that mining has no positive impact on leading industry development or scientific progress.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said last year that China’s goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

The National Development and Reform Commission stated that it would focus on state-owned enterprises involved in cryptocurrency mining. It also considers imposing “punitive electricity prices” on those who participate in cryptocurrency mining activities but pay residential electricity prices.

Since earlier this year, the Chinese authorities have been working to eliminate Bitcoin mining.

The Chinese authorities’ negative comments about crypto often lead to the sell-off of digital coins, even if the comments are not too new.

The decline in cryptocurrency prices was also since many of them hit record highs in November.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,990.90 on November 10, and Ethereum followed closely on November 11.