Bitcoin Drops to $76,000 as Crypto Liquidations Top $1B

• Crypto followed a broad selloff in tech stocks after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress.
• Leveraged bets on rising prices took most of the liquidation losses.
• Contracts on chip stocks traded on crypto exchanges were liquidated in bigger amounts than most altcoins.
• Planned probes into Trump family crypto ventures make the CLARITY Act’s path harder.

The crypto market fell sharply on Thursday, November 5, as traders started pricing in what a Democratic-controlled Congress could mean for the industry and for the crypto businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family. Bitcoin dropped 5.4% to about $76,000 and Ethereum lost more than 7%. CoinGlass data shows that leveraged positions worth $1.06 billion were forcibly closed over 24 hours, and close to nine in ten of them were bets on rising prices. The selloff also tracked a fall of more than 5% in the Nasdaq Composite as investors sold AI-linked stocks.

Thursday’s daily candle opened at $80,504 and erased the whole results-day gain within one session, with an intraday low of $75,568. The next level buyers defended was the mid-September low near $75,000, the last time Bitcoin traded this low before its rally to $87,000 later that month. The 14-day RSI, a gauge of how fast prices are moving, has fallen to about 39. That shows sellers are firmly in control, but the market is still above the area around 30 where selling has often run out of steam in the past.

Chip Stocks Dragged Crypto Down With Them

About $1.3 trillion in technology market value disappeared within 30 minutes of the opening bell. SanDisk fell more than 20%, AMD fell about 16% and Nvidia fell more than 8%, as traders bet that Democrats would put more pressure on AI data-center construction. The day before, Arizona Democrat Yassamin Ansari, a member of the House, wrote on X that a pause on advanced AI development should be at the top of the party’s agenda. Data-center operators Cipher Digital and IREN both fell more than 18%. Both companies started out as bitcoin miners before moving into hosting computing power for AI customers, which is one reason crypto and chip stocks now attract many of the same investors and fall together when those investors sell.

$932 Million in Bullish Bets Wiped Out

A liquidation happens when an exchange closes a trader’s borrowed position because the collateral can no longer cover the losses. The exchange closes those positions by selling at market, so each liquidation adds to the drop. Of the $1.06 billion wiped out, $931.96 million came from long positions. Ethereum and Hyperliquid’s HYPE token both fell further than Bitcoin. BNB lost 3.6% and TRON lost 1.2%, so both held up better than the rest of the market.

SanDisk Contracts Lost More Than Solana

HYPE’s steeper drop makes sense given what now trades on Hyperliquid. Along with other crypto exchanges, it lists perpetual contracts on U.S. stocks and ETFs, which are futures-style bets with no expiry date. When chip stocks collapsed, traders on these exchanges lost money on them too. SanDisk-linked contracts were liquidated in bigger amounts than Solana. Contracts on SOXL, a fund that gives three times the daily return of chip stocks, were close behind. The only notable market where short sellers took the losses was SOXS, its inverse version, which rises when chip stocks fall.

World Liberty First in Line for Subpoenas

Crypto also faces political risk of its own that has nothing to do with AI. Democrats plan to investigate the industry’s financial ties to the Trump family, starting with World Liberty Financial, its USD1 stablecoin and the TRUMP memecoin. Representative Robert Garcia, who is expected to chair the House Oversight Committee, has promised to look into the family’s business dealings, and hearings could begin as early as February. Investigators will also focus on World Liberty’s foreign investors, including a reported $500 million investment linked to UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed. In Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure, released in June, he reported more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income.

Eight Lame-Duck Weeks for the CLARITY Act

The CLARITY Act is the market structure bill that would divide crypto oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, and it is the most exposed piece of crypto legislation. Jaret Seiberg, a Washington policy analyst at TD Cowen, wrote that the new environment “may make it impossible to advance a version of Clarity” that the industry could support. Sherrod Brown, a longtime critic of the industry, is returning to the Senate after winning in Ohio. Republicans control both chambers until the new Congress takes office in January, so the remaining weeks of this session are the bill’s most realistic chance to pass. After January, Democrats will hold at least 54 Senate seats, which is not enough to pass legislation past a filibuster. Committee chairs can still slow the bill down by scheduling hearings and issuing subpoenas instead of bringing it to a vote.

In 2022, FTX Drove the Drop

Looking at the Bitcoin chart, the price fell about 23% after the 2022 midterms. Santiment’s social data shows the election had little to do with that drop. Binance signed its letter of intent to buy FTX on polling day, Bitcoin fell from $20,603 to $15,881 in two days, and in the bankruptcy week FTX was mentioned about 50 times more often than the midterms. This year, Bitcoin closed results day at $80,417 and then gave back the gain as the selloff in tech stocks spread.

Trump Media & Technology Group has moved about $343 million in Bitcoin to Crypto.com, according to on-chain tracking.
I couldn’t confirm the date of the transfer. That transfer has raised questions about whether the company is preparing to sell part of its holdings. Trump Media may have to repay as much as $1 billion in debt later this month, so a sale would add supply from a company linked to the president just as Congress prepares to investigate his family’s crypto income.