Bitcoin Gives Back Its Midterm Bounce, Falling Below $76,000 as the Nasdaq Drops 5%
A $80,600 Thursday morning became a $75,700 afternoon once Wall Street's chip sell-off spread, a day after spot ETFs recorded their first net inflow in four sessions.
Thursday, November 5, 2026/2 min read
Bitcoin spent Thursday morning stalled just below $81,000 and Thursday afternoon falling through every support level the morning's analysts had drawn. It was trading around $80,600 at 10.17 GMT, with its recovery from Tuesday's $75,618 low cooling as spot ETF money returned, FXStreet reported. By 15.42 GMT it had dropped below $76,000, down more than 5 percent on the day, as the Nasdaq fell 5 percent and the semiconductor index 11 percent, Yahoo Finance's live coverage recorded. Its ticker showed $75,723 later in the session.
The round trip erased Wednesday's post-election rally, which we covered when bitcoin hit a two-month low on election day and then recovered above $80,000 as oil crashed and stocks surged. Ether, which had reached $2,423 on Thursday morning, followed it down.
Why did bitcoin fall on Thursday?
Because the trade that lifted it on Wednesday reversed. Wednesday's rally was built on falling oil, lower yields and a 1,569-point gain in the Dow. On Thursday the Dow lost 1,566 points, the S&P 500 fell 3.8 percent and the VIX jumped more than 65 percent to as high as 27.45, its biggest one-day rise in over two years, as investors sold anything tied to AI data-centre capital spending on fears that a Democratic Congress will regulate the buildout. Bitcoin traded as the risk asset it is, not the hedge its marketing describes.
Politics cut the other way too. Brian Gardner at Stifel told clients the Clarity Act, the crypto market-structure bill, is off the table for the lame-duck session, and analysts expect slower crypto legislation under Democratic majorities. The CFTC's approval of single-stock perpetual futures was met the same day by a lawsuit from Cboe and Citadel.
Are bitcoin ETFs seeing inflows again?
Yes, for one day. US spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $75 million on Wednesday, ending three sessions of outflows, according to SoSoValue data cited by FXStreet. Ether ETFs added $53 million after seven days of outflows. Thursday's figures arrive after the US close, and after a 5 percent fall they may not look like Wednesday's.
The technical picture that looked mildly bullish at 10 GMT, with the price above its 50, 100 and 200-day moving averages, had broken by 16 GMT. FXStreet's levels put the 200-day average near $76,555.
What is the latest on the Binance hack?
The FBI has attributed the $6.3 billion theft of 29 October to TraderTraitor, the North Korean group, and reporting this week described how the attackers used LinkedIn and fake job interviews to compromise a Binance engineer. Co-chief executive Richard Teng said the breach was not a single mistake. Bernstein cut its price targets on seven bitcoin miners by between 35 and 54 percent.
Friday brings the US jobs report, with CME FedWatch putting the chance of a December rate hike at 70 percent, down from 83 percent on Wednesday. Rates and dollar liquidity matter more to bitcoin than who runs Congress, CoinShares' James Butterfill argued this week. Thursday suggested the Nasdaq matters most of all.
Published in The Outspoken Digest
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