Chinese authorities are working on a plan to shut down the country’s bitcoin exchanges, as the digital currency’s wild price fluctuations clash with the government’s focus on controlling financial risk ahead of a key political transition next month.

A multi-agency task force on internet finance led by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has drafted rules that would ban domestic trading platforms for bitcoin and other digital currencies, according to Caixin, a respected Chinese financial news website. 

Chinese exchanges including OKCoin, BTC China and Huobi.com accounted for 98 per cent of all bitcoin trading in the six months through to mid-January this year, according to bitcoinity.org. But that ratio has since fallen to 18 per cent in the past six months, following a central-bank crackdown fuelled by concern over money laundering and capital flight.