Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell sharply on Tuesday retreating from near-record highs.
The world’s largest digital coin fell toward $60,000 during late morning trade Singapore time. It recovered some of those losses and was trading at around $60,542 at 9:26 a.m. London time (4:26 a.m. ET), according to Coin Metrics data, is down 5% from 24 hours before.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $60,548, 7.66% 24hour decline as of 2.00 P.M East African Time
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization meanwhile, fell 6% to $4,229. The impetus behind the price movement was not clear.
China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said during a press conference Tuesday that it will continue to clean up virtual currency mining in the country
Earlier this year, China cracked down on bitcoin mining leading to an exodus of miners. Mining is the energy-intensive process that both creates new coins and maintains a log of all transactions of existing digital tokens.
Consequently, Wall Street Journal quoted social media giant Twitter’s CFO Ned Segal saying that investing cash holdings into crypto assets like bitcoin “doesn’t make sense” right now.
Segal cited price volatility and the lack of accounting rules for these assets as critical factors stopping the company from diversifying into cryptocurrencies.
While there was never any expectation of Twitter announcing crypto investments, Segal’s comments likely provided a reason for traders to take some risk off the table in the wake of the rising dollar and controversial crypto tax reporting requirement introduced by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill signed by the U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday.
The retreat in cryptocurrency prices also comes as many of them hit all-time highs in November.
Bitcoin reached a record high of $68,990.90 on Nov. 10 with ether following suit on Nov. 11.
“I think we’re seeing a healthy pullback after a 7 week rally from 40K to 69K, which is normal in an upward trend,” Vijay Ayyar, head of Asia Pacific at cryptocurrency exchange Luno.
