Bitcoin Slips Below $74,000 as Sticky Inflation Sparks $190M Liquidation Wave

Bitcoin slid below $74,000 on November 10 as a fresh U.S. inflation print landed on an already shaky crypto market. In a single one-hour window, $190.72M in positions were liquidated, per CoinGlass data cited by Coinspress. Longs got crushed: $180.10M of that total versus just $10.62M in shorts, meaning the pain came almost entirely from traders betting on higher prices.

Ethereum took the worst of it despite being the smaller asset by market cap. It accounted for roughly 47.3% of one-hour liquidations, against Bitcoin's 28.1%, and its dollar value of forced closures ran about 68% higher than Bitcoin's. Together the two assets made up about three-quarters of all liquidations in the observed period, a sign of uneven leverage stress rather than a broad, uniform flush.

The trigger: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% in October, cooling from September's 0.6% gain. Shelter costs climbed 0.3% and drove more than 30% of the headline increase, while core CPI, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.3% for a third consecutive month. Compounded over 12 months, that monthly core pace implies roughly 3.7% annualized inflation, an illustrative figure rather than an official reading.

October's release came with a statistical hole. The BLS collected no survey data for October 2025 because of a lapse in government appropriations, so it couldn't publish most year-over-year comparisons for October 2026. Crypto was already bleeding before the 8:30 a.m. Eastern release: XRP had shed more than 17% over seven days, Ethereum and Solana were each down about 10%, and HYPE posted double-digit weekly losses. CoinMarketCap's Fear & Greed Index sat at 26, deep in fear territory, with total market cap at roughly $2.46 trillion, off 1.14% in 24 hours.

Bitcoin now has to claw back the level it just lost. A return to $74,000 from the observed price takes an advance of about 0.52%, a narrow gap that makes it a clean test of whether buyers can retake the range. Staying under $73,600 keeps the short-term structure under pressure, with $70,000 as the lower psychological marker. The next CPI release is set for December 10, according to the BLS, with producer-price and personal consumption expenditures reports also on deck — and the Federal Reserve, which targets PCE rather than CPI, still weighing whether underlying pressure is actually easing.