Bitcoin traded near $75,540 around 14:13 UTC on Friday 6 November, down about 5% in 24 hours, after Thursday’s tech-stock rout on Wall Street wiped out everything it had gained since the US midterm vote. Friday’s US jobs report, published at 13:30 UTC, showed 165,000 jobs added in October against forecasts of about 60,000 to 65,000. It did not lift the price. On Coinbase, BTC moved between $75,500 and $76,029 in the five minutes after the release and then drifted back to $75,523 by 14:11 UTC.
The damage was done the day before. Between 14:00 and 16:00 UTC on Thursday, the first stretch of the New York session, bitcoin fell from about $79,600 to about $75,900 on Coinbase. US spot bitcoin ETFs then reported $430.2 million of net outflows for the day, and leveraged long positions were wiped out across the derivatives market.
Ether fared worse. It traded at $2,226 around 14:13 UTC, down 6.67% over 24 hours, while XRP lost 9.45% to $1.18 and the total crypto market value fell 7.02% to $2.57 trillion, according to our market data snapshot. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index stood at 28, in the fear zone.
Bitcoin price today: the whole midterm bounce went in two hours
Election day itself was calm. Bitcoin’s daily candle on Coinbase for Tuesday 3 November opened at $76,674 and closed at $77,336. Wednesday brought the bounce: a high of $81,130.79 in the 15:00 UTC hour and a close of $80,428.31, about 4% above the midterm-day close.
Thursday took it back. The 13:00 UTC hour closed at $79,576, the 14:00 hour at $78,207, and the 15:00 hour, which covers the first half hour of Wall Street trading, closed at $75,920 after touching $75,431.17. The low of the day, $75,035.10, came late, in the 23:00 UTC hour. The daily candle closed at $75,969, a fall of 5.5% from $80,428 on Coinbase data.
Friday was a narrow day up to 14:15 UTC, between $75,186 in the 07:00 UTC hour and $76,306 just after midnight. The price is below the 3 November close, so on these figures the post-election gain is gone.
| Time (UTC) | BTC-USD on Coinbase | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Nov, daily close | $77,336 | US midterm election day |
| 4 Nov, 15:00 hour high | $81,130.79 | Post-vote high |
| 4 Nov, daily close | $80,428.31 | About 4% above the 3 Nov close |
| 5 Nov, 13:00 hour close | $79,576 | Before the US open at 14:30 UTC |
| 5 Nov, 15:00 hour close | $75,920 | First hour of the New York session |
| 5 Nov, 23:00 hour low | $75,035.10 | Low of the day |
| 5 Nov, daily close | $75,969 | Down 5.5% on the day |
| 6 Nov, 13:30 to 13:35 | $75,500 to $76,029 | US jobs report released |
| 6 Nov, 14:11 | $75,523 | After the report |
Ether followed the same path. On Coinbase it closed 3 November at $2,271.64, reached $2,448.26 on 4 November and fell as low as $2,202.27 on 5 November before closing at $2,234.61. At 14:12 UTC on Friday it changed hands at $2,227.08, which puts the ETH/BTC ratio near 0.0295.
The last time we looked at the market in detail, on 2 November, bitcoin had just printed an overnight high near $78,900 on Binance; our pre-election morning market report listed the ETF flows and data due that week.
A 5.5% fall in the Nasdaq set off Thursday’s drop
The trigger was in the stock market, not in crypto. The Nasdaq lost 5.5% on Thursday, to 24,315, and the Dow Jones closed 3.4% lower at 51,523.06, according to AFP figures published by Dawn. Bloomberg, cited in the same report, put the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down around 16% for the week. CoinDesk’s Daybook newsletter called it the Nasdaq’s worst session since April 2025.
Commentators tied the selloff to the midterm result. Democrats took both the House and the Senate, and investors fear a backlash against AI and against new data centres. Kyle Rodda, senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, told The Block that these risks arrive when “the proverbial AI trade was already on shakier foundations”. Axel Rudolph of IG told the same outlet that bitcoin had been “dragged into the AI rout”. CoinDesk’s Daybook also linked the Democratic result to data-centre worries that weigh on bitcoin miners that have moved into AI computing.
Asia took the hit on Friday. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 closed down 6.0% at 57,434.77 and Seoul’s KOSPI down 6.0% at 5,059.69, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng off 1.3% and the Shanghai Composite 1.1%, per the same AFP table. Europe opened lower: at about 10:15 UTC the FTSE 100 was down 2.2%, the DAX 2.3% and the CAC 40 1.8%. Those European numbers are intraday levels, not closes; the sessions were still open when this piece was written.
Neil Wilson of Saxo Markets summed up the mood with “The blood is in the streets, folks”, while saying the selloff looked overdone. Our look at how midterms have moved crypto in the past, and what each result means for the CLARITY Act sets out the political side of the vote.
The jobs report: 165,000 jobs and wages up 0.4%
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 in October, far above the average monthly gain of 48,000 over the previous 12 months. The unemployment rate was 4.1%, with 7.1 million people unemployed; it has stayed between 4.1% and 4.3% since March.
Revisions pushed in the same direction. August was raised by 53,000 to 186,000 and September by 31,000 to 60,000, adding 84,000 jobs to the two previous months. Professional and business services added 70,000 jobs, health care 42,000, transportation and warehousing 25,000 and manufacturing 19,000.
Pay was the other surprise. Average hourly earnings rose 14 cents, or 0.4%, to $38.00, and were 3.1% higher than a year earlier. CoinDesk reported forecasts of 0.3% for the month and 2.9% for the year, and of 4.2% for unemployment.
Bitcoin barely moved. CoinDesk had it slightly lower at $75,800 just after the 13:30 UTC release, which matches the Coinbase range between 13:30 and 13:35 UTC. Bonds moved more: in its 13:55 UTC update, CoinDesk reported the 10-year Treasury yield up 6.4 basis points at 4.894%, with Nasdaq 100 futures still 1.5% higher after Thursday’s fall.
Why a strong jobs number weighs on bitcoin this time
In most cycles a hot labour market is read as good news for risk. This year the Fed’s last move was up, not down. On 16 September the Federal Reserve raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75%-4.00%, by a 12-0 vote, and it held the range there on 28 October.
That October hold was not unanimous. According to the Fed’s statement, the vote was 10 to 2, and the two dissenters, Lisa D. Cook and Beth M. Hammack, wanted another quarter-point increase. The statement said “Inflation remains elevated” and that activity was expanding at a strong pace. Our report on the Fed’s 10-2 hold with two votes for a hike covered how bitcoin took it at the time.
Before Friday’s data, the stock selloff had cooled hike bets. CoinDesk wrote that the odds of a December increase had fallen to about 70% from roughly 95% a few weeks earlier; its Daybook newsletter takes the 70% from a Polymarket prediction market. We could not check CME FedWatch. After the report, CoinDesk wrote that the figures put a December hike in play, but that next week’s consumer and producer price reports would likely weigh more in the Fed’s decision.
A higher chance of a hike tends to lift yields and the dollar, which raises the cost of holding an asset that pays no income. Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com, had told The Block before the release that a strong report, especially one with faster wage growth, could push Treasury yields and the dollar higher. Within half an hour the 10-year yield was near 4.9%.
Spot bitcoin ETFs lost $430.2 million on Thursday
Spot demand did not show up to absorb the selling. US spot bitcoin ETFs had net outflows of $430.2 million on Thursday 5 November, according to TFTC’s ETF flow tracker; CoinDesk’s Daybook gives the same total without naming its provider. We could not open the Farside or SoSoValue pages to compare.
Fidelity’s FBTC, not BlackRock’s IBIT, led the exits, a ranking The Block also gives with the same three largest figures.
| Fund (5 Nov) | Net flow, US$ millions (TFTC) |
|---|---|
| Fidelity FBTC | -199.9 |
| BlackRock IBIT | -105.0 |
| Grayscale GBTC | -49.9 |
| Franklin EZBC | -32.9 |
| VanEck HODL | -23.6 |
| ARK 21Shares ARKB | -18.9 |
| All spot bitcoin ETFs | -430.2 |
It was the third day of outflows in four. TFTC’s daily totals show -$398.6 million on 2 November, -$115.6 million on 3 November, +$74.6 million on 4 November, when an FBTC inflow of $236.7 million outweighed a $201.2 million IBIT outflow, and then Thursday’s -$430.2 million. That makes -$869.8 million for the month after four sessions. Friday’s flows will only be known after the US close.
Bitfinex analysts, quoted by CoinDesk’s Daybook, said that “sustaining this bounce requires actual spot demand”.
$1.23 billion of liquidations, 87.5% of them longs
Leverage did the rest. Over the 24 hours to 14:18 UTC on Friday, CoinGlass counted $1.23 billion of liquidated positions, up 66.7% on the previous period. Long positions made up $1.07 billion of it and shorts $153.02 million, an 87.5% share for longs. In all, 236,976 traders were liquidated.
The largest single order was a $10.94 million ETHUSDT long on Binance, closed at $2,243.86, and Binance accounted for 44.9% of the total. CoinDesk’s Daybook, using a different window and not naming its source, gave more than $1.27 billion over 24 hours, more than $1.1 billion of it bullish bets.
The pace has slowed sharply since. CoinGlass showed $18.25 million liquidated in the last hour, $31.33 million over four hours and $89.88 million over 12 hours, all at 14:18 UTC. Our reading of those numbers is that the forced selling was packed into Thursday afternoon UTC, and that Friday’s moves have not been driven by liquidations.
A liquidation is what happens when an exchange closes a leveraged position because the trader’s margin no longer covers the loss; when many long positions are closed at once, the forced sales push the price lower and can trigger the next wave. Our glossary entry on liquidation explains margin, liquidation prices and cascades in more detail.
Carlos Guzman, a research vice president at GSR, described the move to CoinDesk’s Daybook as “a pullback in risk appetite amplified by leverage”.
Bitcoin in euros: about EUR 67,800
For readers in the euro area, bitcoin traded at EUR 67,785 on Coinbase’s BTC-EUR pair at 14:13 UTC, and ether at EUR 1,998.70 at the same minute. That is one exchange’s price, not an index. We do not have a sourced euro level from before the selloff, so we do not give a euro percentage change.
European shares followed New York down: at about 10:15 UTC the DAX was 2.3% lower and the CAC 40 1.8%, per AFP. We found no figure for Milan’s FTSE MIB.
What analysts are watching on the chart
Jasper De Maere, an OTC trader at Wintermute, told CoinDesk’s Daybook that he sees $73,000 and $68,000 as possible downside levels, and that bitcoin would need to reclaim and hold $80,000 to show renewed strength. Those are his levels; Coindaro makes no forecast.
Not everyone reads the AI unwind as bad news for bitcoin in the longer run. André Dragosch, head of research for Europe at Bitwise, expects bitcoin to outperform US equities as the AI trade unwinds, according to The Block, which adds that he sees bitcoin as more sensitive to the dollar and to rate expectations than to growth. That is a view about the future. On Thursday, bitcoin’s 5.5% daily fall on Coinbase matched the Nasdaq’s.
Next dates: CPI on 10 November, PPI on 13 November, the Fed on 9 December
The next test comes on Tuesday 10 November, when the BLS publishes October consumer prices at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time (13:30 UTC). Producer prices follow on Friday 13 November at the same hour. The November jobs report is due on Friday 4 December, four days before the Fed’s last meeting of the year.
The Fed decides on 9 December, at the end of its two-day meeting; our page on the 8-9 December FOMC meeting follows it. Daily ETF flows, published after each US session, will show whether the outflows of this week continue.
Several things are still unknown. We could not check CME FedWatch probabilities, Farside’s or SoSoValue’s ETF figures, or the ether ETF total for 5 November. European closing levels for Friday were not available at the time of writing, and no single headline has been found for Thursday’s 14:00 to 16:00 UTC drop beyond the Nasdaq selloff that commentators point to.