Bitcoin Smashes $80K as Midterm Results Land, Wiping Out $951M in Trades

Bitcoin cracked the $80,000 ceiling on Wednesday, November 4, as early U.S. midterm election returns hit the tape. The coin had slumped to a local floor of $75,618 during the early vote count, then reversed hard — climbing more than 3.7% in 24 hours and touching a temporary peak of $81,000. At the time of writing it was trading near $80,674, easing back as traders banked profits after the breakout.

The violent swing shredded leveraged traders. According to CoinGlass liquidation heatmaps, more than $951 million was liquidated across major futures exchanges in the past 24 hours. Shorts bore the brunt: over $560 million in bearish bets got wiped out as price sliced through the $79,500 resistance level and accelerated toward $81,000. Data tracked by Binance and CoinMarketCap show total liquidations climbed more than 20% versus the previous session, a sign of leverage rebalancing as election uncertainty drained away.

Confirmation of U.S. Congressional outcomes reshaped positioning on both the institutional and retail side. Prediction markets had initially priced in caution over how seats would split across the legislative branch, but fading fears of political gridlock — plus a positive open on Wall Street equity indices — lined up with Bitcoin's run. The rally lifted altcoins too: Ether rose 4.1% to trade above $2,380, while Solana and Cardano each gained over 2%, per market reports from Investing.com.

Not everything under the hood is flashing green. Market analysis from Bitfinex flags recent outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, leaving the spot market's ability to absorb supply under scrutiny against the heavier speculative action in derivatives. Bitcoin's 24-hour trading volume hit $31.67 billion, a volume-to-market-cap ratio of 2.01% per CoinMarketCap metrics. Circulating supply sits at 20.11 million coins, with immediate support stacked in the $75,600 to $75,700 band.

Next up on traders' radar: the Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting and official U.S. Consumer Price Index figures, both due next week. Those two events could decide whether the $80,000 line holds as a floor or fades into another memory.