Bitcoin's 6% Drop Drags Circle Down 12% as Coinbase and Strategy Fall 10%

Circle Internet Group got no shelter from the storm. The stock is at $67.25 after a 12% afternoon plunge, even though Compass Point upgraded it to Buy on November 5 with a $99 price target. Coinbase Global sits at $135.93, down 10%, and Strategy is at $128.54, also off 10%. Bitcoin itself trades at $75,626.95, down 6% over 24 hours and 12% over the past month.

Circle's headline numbers looked great until you read further. The company reported Q3 2026 earnings per share of $0.84 on November 4, blowing past the $0.38 consensus, but $182 million of Arc token presale revenue did most of that work. Strip the presale out and the rest of the business brought in $25 million, down 11% year over year. Ending USDC circulation was $73.9 billion, flat year over year, and reserve income slipped 8% as the reserve return rate fell. Management also flagged that expanded distribution deals with Binance and Hyperliquid could pressure Q4 2026 margins.

Coinbase is trading against a rattled exchange backdrop. CryptoProwl reports that $6.3 billion of bitcoin was stolen in a record Binance hack on October 29, with nearly $12 billion in crypto and cash leaving Binance since. Coinbase responded with a blog post saying 99% of customer digital assets sit in cold storage, are fully backed, and are never lent out without authorization. Weak trading had already bruised the exchange: Q3 revenue of $1.22 billion is down 35% year over year.

Strategy is the leveraged play, so it swings hardest. As the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, its treasury is financed through preferred stock and convertible debt, which magnifies the token's moves in both directions. MARA Holdings took the worst of it among the five names, down 14% at $5.94, while Robinhood Markets fell 11% to $77.72 — landing between Circle and Coinbase on the pain scale.

Washington isn't helping. Stifel's Brian Gardner told Yahoo Finance the Clarity Act is off the table for the lame duck session, and he expects investigations into crypto firms. He also warned that Senator Elizabeth Warren, poised to chair the Senate Banking Committee, is a risk for regulated names like Coinbase and Circle. Fundstrat's Sean Farrell countered that a Democratic Congress could actually boost bitcoin's appeal as a deficit hedge.

The next checkpoint lands November 6 with the October jobs report. Circle, Coinbase and Strategy all now hinge on whether bitcoin can find its footing after the reversal. Circle's margin pressure, a stalled crypto bill and Strategy's leveraged treasury give the bears plenty of ammunition in the meantime.