AI Panic Hits Crypto: Bitcoin Falls to $75,350 as $150B Vaporizes

Bitcoin touched $75,350 on November 6, part of a 24-hour stretch that stripped roughly $150 billion from the total crypto market. According to CoinGecko, overall market capitalization dropped more than 5.1% while leveraged traders ate $1.25 billion in liquidations — the kind of forced selling that turns a slide into a stampede.

The majors bled right alongside it. Ethereum gave up 7.9%, XRP dropped 8.7% and Solana shed 6.4% over the same window, per CoinGecko. Crypto didn't stumble on its own bad news: it simply followed tech stocks off a cliff.

That cliff arrived November 5, when roughly $2.5 trillion vanished from US equities. The Nasdaq Composite plunged 5.52% — its ugliest session since April 2025 — leaving the index more than 10% under its October 6 record. The S&P 500 and Dow logged their worst days since the same stretch.

The trigger was mounting worry that the AI buildout is running hotter than the demand behind it. Investors are also watching politics: Democratic midterm gains could slow AI infrastructure expansion, especially in Texas, where Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has floated pausing new data center construction until stronger protections are in place — a question mark hanging over big-ticket plans from Google, Meta, Oracle and OpenAI.

The tremor went global fast. South Korea's Kospi plunged nearly 9% at Friday's open, tripping a 20-minute trading halt. Money ran for safety instead, pushing the 10-year US Treasury yield down to 4.84%, its lowest in two months.

Not everyone is mourning. Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told CNN a pullback in AI infrastructure spending could actually be healthy. "We want a slowdown in the AI buildout. It was too frenzied and speculative," he said, arguing a gradual deflation of the AI bubble beats a sudden pop. For crypto traders, the lesson is familiar: when tech sneezes, leveraged coins catch pneumonia.