Bitcoin’s Election Honeymoon Turned Into a Liquidation Hangover 🪂

Bitcoin ($BTC) fell below $76,000 on Thursday, November 5, dropping to $75,463 — its lowest level since Sept. 16 — after briefly retreating from a post-election peak above $80,800. The reversal followed Wednesday’s advance to above $80,000 and the Democratic Party’s sweep in the US midterm elections, but Arthur Hayes flagged major downside risk as a technology-led stock selloff erased gains across risk assets. The $BTC /USD price also slipped below its 50-week simple moving average (SMA) at $75,733, putting that level’s role as support under pressure.

Approximately $1.08 billion in crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, including approximately $954 million in bullish bets, while roughly $428 million in crypto longs were liquidated in one hour during the selloff. Earlier, about $378 million in Bitcoin short positions were liquidated in one hour as the price pushed above $80,000, according to CoinGlass data, indicating that much of Wednesday’s buying pressure came from traders closing losing positions. Roughly 90% of the top 100 cryptocurrencies were in the red, Ethereum ($ETH) shed more than 5%, and other major tokens posted comparable losses.

US equities deepened the retreat. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 4.2% in one measure and 5.5% in another, with the S&P 500 losing about 2.6% in late-morning trading before recording its biggest bearish intraday movement in months, dropping almost 4% in minutes and approaching a correction, or a 10% drop from its peak. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 8%, Nvidia lost 9.3%, AMD plunged 17.3%, CoreWeave and Nebius declined by double digits, and Tesla tumbled roughly 9.5% after Elon Musk spent heavily backing Republican candidates. “The market's moving from the promise of AI to the price of AI,” Ted Parkhill, chief executive of Incline Investment Management, told Reuters.

Democratic control of Congress initially rattled investors expecting tougher oversight of industries favored by President Donald Trump, although stocks rallied Wednesday as traders anticipated gridlock would limit major policy changes and lower oil prices would ease inflation. Bitwise Europe analyst André Dragosch told Decrypt the Democratic sweep was “largely priced in.” Voters in at least 29 U.S. jurisdictions backed restrictions on data-center development, though not every measure is binding, and UBS estimates potential pauses could threaten 30% of planned U.S. data-center capacity additions in 2028, per Reuters. “We suspect there is going to be some scrutiny on this aggressive AI buildout,” Swissquote senior analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya told Reuters. Democratic control also complicates efforts to revive the stalled Clarity Act, a proposed federal rulebook for digital assets, while the new Congress will not take office until January.

Selling spread beyond leveraged futures. Whalio’s Binance spot data showed $141.2 million more aggressive buying than selling on November 4, when the buy-side share of trading volume reached 54%; by late November 5, spot sellers exceeded buyers by 10.8% of turnover over 24 hours, among the strongest selling imbalances of the past month, while futures sellers led by 1.8% of their market’s turnover despite much larger futures volume. Binance perpetual futures open interest fell 7.1%, CryptoQuant’s Coinbase Premium Index deteriorated from −0.09% on Wednesday to −0.19% early Thursday, BlackRock’s IBIT recorded $201.2 million in ETF outflows on Wednesday to extend its four-day withdrawal streak, and US Bitcoin ETFs collectively attracted $74.6 million that day largely through Fidelity. Wall Street also saw wallets linked to Trump Media transfer 4,259 BTC, worth roughly $342 million, to Crypto.com, prompting selling concerns ahead of a November 30 debt repayment window, though no sale has been confirmed. Bitcoin was testing the psychologically important $75,000 level, with a decisive break exposing the 200-day moving average near $73,200; a recovery above $80,000 and approximately $81,300, the 30-day moving average identified in Reuters’ technical analysis, would be required to rebuild confidence.