Bitcoin Wipes Out Post-Election Rally as AI Stocks Sink and $428M in Longs Vanish

> Bitcoin slid to about $76,500 Thursday, down nearly 5% on the day and right back to where it sat before Wednesday's hop above $80,000. Ethereum lost more than 5%, and the pain spread across the board. About 90% of the top 100 tokens traded in the red as a tech-stock selloff jumped the fence into crypto.

> The liquidation machine went to work fast. Roughly $428 million in crypto longs got wiped out inside a single hour, according to the report. Exchanges automatically close underfunded positions as prices fall, and that forced selling feeds on itself — which is exactly what the ugly hourly candles show.

> Wall Street offered zero shelter. The S&P 500 dropped about 2.6% in late-morning trading, while the Nasdaq sank nearly 4%, flirting with correction territory. Chipmakers and AI infrastructure names got hit first: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index slid about 8%, CoreWeave and Nebius tumbled by double digits, and Tesla fell roughly 9.5%. The S&P 500 logged its biggest bearish intraday move in months, shedding almost 4% in minutes. "The market's moving from the promise of AI to the price of AI," Incline Investment Management CEO Ted Parkhill told Reuters.

> The trigger runs through Washington. Democrats' sweep of Congress initially looked bullish — traders bet gridlock would freeze big policy swings, and falling oil prices helped. Bitwise Europe analyst André Dragosch told Decrypt the sweep was "largely priced in." By Thursday, investors were asking harder questions about the data-center boom, especially in states where voters are souring on rising electricity bills. Ballot measures restricting data-center development passed in at least 29 U.S. jurisdictions, though not all are binding, and UBS estimates potential pauses could threaten 30% of planned U.S. data-center capacity additions in 2028, per Reuters. "We suspect there is going to be some scrutiny on this aggressive AI buildout," Swissquote senior analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya told Reuters.

> Crypto's own policy hopes took a hit too. Democratic control complicates any revival of the stalled Clarity Act, the proposed federal rulebook for digital assets, and the new Congress doesn't sit until January. Wednesday's dramatic rally wasn't all conviction anyway — about $378 million in short positions were liquidated in one hour as Bitcoin pushed past $80,000, per CoinGlass data. Thursday simply flipped that machinery in reverse.

> The ground was already shaky. Crypto had shed roughly $300 billion in value over the prior month, squeezed by AI spending worries, rising borrowing costs and the fallout from last week's multibillion-dollar Binance hack. Traders now expect another Federal Reserve rate increase in December, with Friday's October jobs report poised to move those bets. On the charts, Bitcoin's still-forming daily candle threatens a bearish engulfing pattern, with selling running from $79,000 down to near $76,100. The next test sits at $75,000, and reclaiming $80,000 would ease the pressure — though Thursday's candle hasn't closed, so nothing's confirmed yet.