Bitcoin slips to $75,700 as $1.1B in leveraged bets get wiped out

Bitcoin's post-election rally flamed out fast. The coin touched $80,000 on Wednesday, then gave it all back Thursday, sinking to $75,700 — a 6% slide in a single day. Ether was punished worse, dropping more than 7% and landing at $2,247, according to The Block.

Leveraged traders absorbed the worst of the hit. CoinGlass data cited by The Block shows $1.1 billion in crypto positions were liquidated across roughly 211,000 accounts in 24 hours. A single brutal four-hour stretch accounted for $879.92 million of the carnage, with $818.90 million coming from longs betting on higher prices.

The backdrop was a Wall Street rout in AI stocks. The Nasdaq closed Thursday down 5.5% at 24,315.00, now 11.9% below its October peak, while the S&P 500 shed 4.4% and Nvidia fell 9.3%. Investors are pressing on when pricey AI projects actually start paying off, with high borrowing costs and potential post-election limits on data centers piling on the anxiety.

Worth separating two different things: liquidations aren't the same as money fleeing Bitcoin ETFs. Forced exits from borrowed positions drive the first; cash moving in or out of funds drives the second. Spot Bitcoin ETFs were already bleeding before Thursday, with FarSide data showing outflows of $643.2 million on October 30, $398.6 million on November 2 and $115.6 million on November 3 — $1.16 billion gone over three trading days.

That streak snapped on November 4 with a net inflow of $74.6 million, though the heavyweights split. Fidelity's FBTC pulled in $236.7 million, while BlackRock's IBIT saw $201.2 million walk out. Data for November 5 is still incomplete, with several issuers yet to report — those numbers will reveal whether the inflow marked real demand or just a pause in the bleeding.

Analysts are split on what's driving the pain. Swissquote's Ipek Ozkardeskaya told Reuters there were worries coming into earnings season that AI spending was too much, while J.P. Morgan's Michael Cembalest flagged an 8% drop in hedge funds' gross long-short exposure and about $4 trillion in AI-related off-balance-sheet commitments. Wintermute called Wednesday's rebound short-lived optimism, naming $73,000 and $68,000 as levels to watch and wanting Bitcoin above $80,000 before getting bullish. Wincent's Paul Howard pointed to politics, saying recent Democratic gains in Congress could make passing the Clarity Act harder. Bitcoin's tight tether to tech is measurable — Foundry Labs clocked a 0.41 correlation with the Nasdaq-100 tracker QQQ over 63 days, and noted public Bitcoin miners now trade like AI infrastructure stocks. Still, correlation isn't causation, and nothing proves the AI selloff caused Thursday's drop.