Wall Street bounced on Friday, bitcoin did not: what crypto is trading now, and the dates that can change it

Why is bitcoin down today when Wall Street is not? On Friday 6 November the US stock market won back part of Thursday’s AI rout and bitcoin did not join in. The Nasdaq Composite stood at 24,545 at 17:49 UTC, 0.94% above Thursday’s close, according to Yahoo Finance data. In the same minute bitcoin traded at $75,470 on Coinbase, 0.66% below the $75,969 at which the UTC day began, after a brief dip to $74,722 at 15:05 UTC, its lowest print on Coinbase since 21 August.

That split is the question of this evening’s analysis. On Thursday the two fell almost to the decimal: the Nasdaq Composite lost 5.52% and bitcoin 5.54% on Coinbase’s UTC daily candle. On Friday they parted. If bitcoin is no longer simply tracking AI stocks, the figures of the US session point to what it is facing instead: a fifth day of outflows at the largest spot ETF, a stronger dollar and a December rate hike that betting markets and futures now price as the most likely outcome.

The morning, from the 165,000 jobs report to Thursday’s $430.2 million of ETF outflows, is in our midday report on the selloff and the jobs data; this piece starts at the opening bell, 14:30 UTC. Two things are missing as it is written. The cash session runs until 21:00 UTC (US clocks went back on 1 November), so every index level below is an intraday print with its time, not a close. And spot ETF flows for Friday were not published at 17:50 UTC.

The US open: a $440 slide in five minutes, then a fast recovery

Bitcoin did not take the opening bell well. The 14:30 UTC minute on Coinbase opened at $75,516 and closed at $75,619. Over the next five minutes the price slid to $75,177, reached at 14:35 UTC, a drop of about $440 or 0.6%. It then climbed back to the $75,800-75,900 area within ten minutes, and the 14:51 UTC minute printed the hour’s high of $76,037.

Equity fear eased at the same time. The Cboe volatility index (VIX), which closed Thursday at 28.18 after a jump of about 70% in one session, stood at 27.40 at 13:00 UTC and 26.17 in the first minute of trading, then fell to its low of the day, 23.47, at 14:54 UTC, according to Yahoo Finance minute data. Bitcoin’s weak first five minutes were not a split from stocks: the Nasdaq Composite also slipped, from 24,625 to 24,568 between 14:30 and 14:35 UTC. Over the next twenty minutes both rose, and moving together is the pattern of the rest of the session.

The 15:05 UTC flush: five minutes of prints under $75,000

The low of the day came half an hour later. The 15:00 UTC minute closed at $75,402 on Coinbase. At 15:03 the price touched $75,050 on 61 BTC of volume; at 15:04 it broke under $75,000 to $74,900 on 148.7 BTC, the heaviest minute of the day so far; at 15:05 it printed $74,722 on 93.9 BTC and closed that minute at $74,864.

The break did not last. The 15:06 minute closed at $75,107, the 15:10 minute at $75,317 and the 15:15 minute near $75,700. Prints under $75,000 appeared in five consecutive minutes, from 15:04 to 15:08 UTC, the last of them at $74,994; after 15:08 the price did not go back below $75,089 before 17:49 UTC. The 15:00-16:00 UTC hour still traded 1,336 BTC on Coinbase, the busiest hour of the day, against 959 BTC in the opening hour and 220 BTC in the 12:00 UTC hour.

No source we could open names a cause for the flush, and we do not offer one. The timing does match the stock market’s own turn. Bitcoin’s high of the hour came at 14:51 UTC; the Nasdaq Composite peaked at about 24,825 at 14:54 UTC, and Nvidia and the SOX chip index at 14:51, according to Yahoo Finance minute data. By 15:06 the Nasdaq was down to 24,676, while the VIX climbed back from 23.47 to 24.92.

Other venues printed slightly different lows for the same minute: Binance’s BTCUSDT pair bottomed at $74,888 at 15:05 UTC, according to its public candles, and other trackers quoted figures between $74,255 and $74,780, some without a time. The Coinbase figure is the one we use throughout, with its clock.

The “lowest since August” label holds on Coinbase’s daily candles, with one nuance. The last lower print was $73,005 on 21 August; the low on 22 August was already $76,472. Bitcoin did dip under $75,000 once since then, on 15 and 16 September, to $74,887.50 and $74,911.53, so Friday was not its first trip below that level since August, only its deepest, by about $165. One French outlet wrote that bitcoin had not been under $75,000 since mid-April, which the same daily data contradicts.

After 15:10 UTC bitcoin settled into a range. The 16:00 UTC hour ran between $75,264 and $75,953, and from 17:00 to 17:49 UTC between $75,402 and $76,033, with the price at $75,470 at 17:49 UTC. Friday’s whole range on Coinbase, $74,722 to $76,306, is $1,584 wide, about 2.1%. Thursday’s was $5,809, about 7.2%.

Ether made a higher low while bitcoin made a lower one

Ether fell in the same minute. Its Coinbase low was $2,205.74 at 15:05 UTC, just above Thursday’s low of $2,202.27, while bitcoin’s $74,722 was below its Thursday low of $75,035. Ether traded at $2,217.50 at 17:49 UTC. Its volume was concentrated in the US hours: 14,710 ETH in the 14:00 UTC hour and 14,685 ETH in the 15:00 UTC hour, against 2,300 to 4,800 ETH per hour between 07:00 and 13:00 UTC.

The wider market followed bitcoin rather than ether. Our market snapshot at 17:58 UTC showed a total crypto market value of $2.56 trillion, down 3.42% in 24 hours, bitcoin dominance at 59.1% and the Crypto Fear & Greed index at 28, in the “fear” zone. XRP was the weakest of the five largest coins at $1.18, down 4.03% in 24 hours.

Wall Street’s Friday bounce came in the opening gap, then faded

The equity rebound was real but smaller than some reports suggested, and most of it happened before the bell. The Nasdaq Composite closed Thursday at 24,315.00 and opened Friday at 24,602.48, a gap of 1.18%. It reached 24,825.55 at about 14:54 UTC, 2.1% above Thursday’s close, then drifted lower through the afternoon: 24,789 at 15:00 UTC, 24,683 at 16:00 UTC, 24,716 at 17:00 UTC and 24,545 at 17:49 UTC, a few points above the low it had touched at 17:38 UTC, 24,529.

The chip stocks, the centre of Thursday’s damage, show the fade best. The SOX index traded at 9,627 at its high, 6.8% above Thursday’s close, and stood at 9,245 at 17:49 UTC, up 2.6%. Nvidia, which closed Thursday at $181.60 after a 9.3% fall, touched $194.90 at 14:51 UTC and was back at $185.60 at 17:49 UTC. The Dow was slightly negative all afternoon, with an intraday low of 50,993.

Set the clocks side by side and the split narrows to one window. From the 14:30 UTC open to 17:49 UTC, the Nasdaq Composite slipped from 24,602 to 24,545 (-0.2%) and bitcoin moved from $75,516 to $75,470 (-0.1%): during the cash session both were flat to lower, and they peaked and fell within minutes of each other. The gap opened overnight. Between Thursday’s 21:00 UTC close and Friday’s open, bitcoin lost 0.6% on Coinbase, from $75,985 to $75,516, while the Nasdaq opened 1.2% higher. Measured over the same window, from Thursday’s close to 17:49 UTC, the Nasdaq was up 0.9% and bitcoin down 0.7%: the whole 1.6-point gap, and a little more, was made before the bell. The Asian session sat inside that window, with Seoul’s KOSPI and Tokyo’s Nikkei both down about 6%, according to Protos.

Thursday’s fall had a political trigger in the reporting of Decrypt and Protos: the Democratic sweep in the midterms raised fears over approvals and oversight of AI data centres. What that sweep means for crypto law is in our piece on Elizabeth Warren’s likely return at the head of the Senate Banking Committee. Axel Rudolph of IG said bitcoin was “dragged into the AI rout as investors rapidly unwind risk across technology and crypto markets”, in comments reported by The Block. Kyle Rodda of Capital.com told the same outlet: “The regulatory and political risks arise at a time when the proverbial AI trade was already on shakier foundations.”

The dollar rose 0.6% and a December Fed hike became the base case

Two macro numbers moved against bitcoin on Friday, and one did not. The jobs report at 13:30 UTC showed 165,000 jobs added in October, an unemployment rate of 4.1% and average hourly earnings up 0.4% to $38.00, 3.1% over a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Revisions added 84,000 jobs to August and September combined. “Both the unemployment rate, at 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million, changed little in October,” the BLS wrote.

The Federal Reserve’s last move, dated 17 September 2026, was up: a 25 basis point hike to a target range of 3.75-4.00%, according to the Fed’s own table of rate decisions. A strong labour report therefore feeds the case for another hike, not for a cut.

Markets read it that way. On Polymarket’s “Fed decision in December?” market, a 25 basis point increase was priced at 77.5% at 17:38 UTC, no change at 20.5% and a 25 basis point cut at 0.65%. Bitcoin Magazine reported that CME FedWatch showed about 79% for a December hike after the report, against about 70% before it. Criptovaluta.it gave 76.8% at 15:07 UTC without naming its source. The three figures come from different instruments and are not interchangeable, but they point the same way.

Bitunix analysts quoted by Bitcoin.com said that “the technology sell-off has also reduced market expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike in December.” Thursday’s rout lowered the odds; Friday’s payrolls raised them again. Bitcoin got no relief from the first move and took the second.

The dollar index (DXY) closed Thursday at 101.55. It stood at 102.06 a minute before the jobs data and 102.19 in the minute of the release, reached its intraday high of 102.36 at 14:23 UTC, was at 102.35 at the 14:30 UTC open and at 102.18 at 17:40 UTC, about 0.6% higher on the day, according to Yahoo Finance minute data. A rising dollar is a headwind for an asset priced in dollars, though the size of that effect on any given day cannot be read from the candles.

Yields were not the driver. The Treasury’s daily par curve put the 10-year at 4.84% on 5 November, down from 4.95% on 3 November, after Thursday’s rush into bonds. On Friday the Cboe 10-year yield index, which Yahoo Finance reports as ^TNX, moved from a previous close of 4.837% to 4.849% at 17:34 UTC: about one basis point.

London is tightening too. The Bank of England raised Bank Rate by 25 basis points to 4% on Thursday 5 November, by a vote of 8-1, with Catherine Mann voting for 50 basis points. It expects inflation, 3.5% in September, to approach 5% by mid-2027. “Global energy prices have continued to rise from an already elevated level,” the Bank wrote. For UK readers that is the rate backdrop; CryptoSlate noted that its effect on bitcoin has not been measured.

Bitcoin ETF flows: $430.2 million out on Thursday, Friday’s figure not yet out

For Thursday 5 November, US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $430.23 million, according to Farside Investors data reported by CryptoSlate. None of the 12 funds had inflows. SoSoValue’s count, reported by Cointelegraph, gives $430 million out of the bitcoin funds and about $100 million out of the ether funds. The two providers agree to within rounding; their figures are shown separately below.

Fidelity’s outflow came a day after it had taken in $236.7 million on 4 November. BlackRock’s IBIT, the largest fund, had its fifth straight day of outflows, about $1.04 billion across the five sessions from 30 October, including $405.3 million on 2 November, according to the same Farside data. Across all bitcoin ETFs the five sessions from 30 October to 5 November cost about $1.51 billion (Farside via CryptoSlate).

A third daily table, published by TFTC without naming its data vendor, shows the November pattern: -$398.6 million on 2 November, -$115.6 million on 3 November, +$74.6 million on 4 November and -$430.2 million on 5 November, for -$869.8 million in the month so far. For the year to date, Cointelegraph’s tally puts net flows into US spot bitcoin ETFs at about -$510 million after Thursday.

Ether funds lost $99.98 million on Thursday, according to Farside via CryptoSlate, $75.2 million of it from BlackRock’s ETHA. The Block counted more than $500 million out of all US spot crypto ETFs on Thursday and more than $1.1 billion over the week so far; within that, SoSoValue data showed $1.2 million leaving Solana funds and $11 million leaving Zcash funds.

The summer looked very different. A 21Shares report of 2 November, cited by CryptoSlate, found that US bitcoin ETFs added 79,800 BTC in the third quarter while miners produced 41,300 BTC, with 91% of those inflows concentrated in two windows, 17-27 August and 21-25 September. So far in November, the daily tables show more selling than buying.

Europe offered one contrary sign that we could not check first-hand. André Dragosch, head of research at Bitwise Europe, said on X on 6 November that the firm’s European bitcoin ETP was seeing “very significant orders” that morning, few in number but large in size; he did not say who the buyers were, according to Criptovaluta.it.

Friday’s US flows were not out when this was written at 17:50 UTC. Farside and SoSoValue usually publish them after the US close, in the US evening or overnight. The next CoinShares weekly fund-flow report is due on Monday 9 November.

Leverage: Thursday did the forced selling, and longs are still paying

Forced selling was mostly a Thursday story. CoinGlass data reported by Decrypt counted $1.05 billion of crypto liquidations over 24 hours, $930.04 million of them on long positions; bitcoin accounted for $267.20 million and ether for $167.14 million. A later CoinGlass reading, in a Journal du Coin article published at 17:17 Paris time (16:17 UTC) on Friday, gave about $941 million over 24 hours across 161,200 traders, with the largest single liquidation a $32.4 million bitcoin position on Bitget. The totals differ because the 24-hour window rolls.

The open interest in bitcoin futures barely moved. CoinGlass data cited by Bitcoin.com at 15:06 UTC put it at 686,570 BTC, about $52.04 billion, down 1.88% in 24 hours, with Binance at $10.58 billion and CME at $7.13 billion. A 5% fall in the price with only a 1.88% drop in open positions means traders kept most of their bets on. That fact can be read both ways: less forced selling was needed, and the leverage that could be forced out later is still in place.

The funding rate on Binance’s BTCUSDT perpetual stayed positive through the whole drop, according to Binance’s public data: +0.0100% per eight hours on 5 November at 08:00 and 16:00 UTC, +0.0055% at 08:00 UTC on Friday and +0.0090% at 16:00 UTC. Binance’s baseline is +0.01%. Longs were still paying shorts, which is not what a capitulation usually looks like. Binance’s own long/short account ratio stood at about 3.17 at 17:00 UTC, meaning about 76% of its accounts with a position were long.

Options traders were buying protection. According to Criptovaluta.it, which cites Laevitas, CoinGlass and Deribit, the 25-delta skew on bitcoin and ether was at its lowest since early October, meaning puts cost more than calls. The most traded bitcoin option of the previous 24 hours was the $74,000 put expiring on 27 November, at 2,215 BTC, ahead of the $69,000 put of the same date, at 1,736 BTC. The 27 November expiry carries just over $5 billion of open interest and the 25 December expiry about $10.5 billion, mostly calls.

On-chain, CryptoQuant’s Julio Moreno said spot demand was contracting at its fastest pace since 10 January, according to Journal du Coin, and Glassnode data cited by CryptoSlate showed a 30-day net change of about -151,885 BTC in long-term holders’ positions, a net figure that does not by itself mean sales.

Why is bitcoin down today while stocks are up?

Put the session’s figures in order and a pattern appears, though two days are a thin sample. On Thursday bitcoin fell with the Nasdaq, almost point for point. On Friday it did not share the equity gap higher, and during the cash session both drifted lower from their opening levels. What separated them was the overnight: stocks were bought back before the bell; bitcoin was not.

Three measurable things weighed on bitcoin on Friday without holding back the chip stocks. The largest bitcoin ETF was on a five-day outflow streak to Thursday. The dollar index rose 0.6%. The most likely December outcome moved toward a hike, at 77.5% on Polymarket and about 79% on CME FedWatch as reported. Chip stocks, by contrast, were rebounding from a 12% fall in a single session.

What this reading cannot show matters as much. No source explains the 15:05 UTC flush. Friday’s ETF flows, the clearest test of the outflow reading, are not known yet. Positive funding and steady open interest mean the leverage of the past weeks is still in the market. And the Nasdaq’s afternoon fade, from +2.1% to +0.9%, suggests the AI trade has not been settled either: if it was the main channel on Thursday, it has not closed.

What would change the picture: the levels and data to watch

These are levels and data points named by the sources above. They are not forecasts, and none is ours.

• $74,722 on Coinbase, Friday’s low at 15:05 UTC, and $74,780, the first support named by Decrypt. Below them Decrypt names $72,500-73,000, then $70,000; the last lower Coinbase low was $73,005 on 21 August.
• $76,000, where Bitcoin.com counted three failed attempts to break higher, and the 200-day exponential moving average near $76,497, according to Decrypt.
• The 50-day exponential moving average near $79,756, then about $80,000, Decrypt’s next resistance. $81,131 was the Coinbase high on 4 November, the day of the midterm bounce.
• The Nasdaq Composite at 25,736.51, its 4 November close: regaining it would erase Thursday’s fall.
• The dollar index above 102.36, Friday’s intraday high, and the 10-year Treasury yield above 4.95%, its level of 3 November.
• The next three days of ETF flows, from Farside and SoSoValue, and whether IBIT’s outflow run reaches a sixth and seventh day.

Dates to watch, from Friday’s close to Christmas

The Anthropic listing ties back to Thursday’s channel. Decrypt, following a Wall Street Journal report, wrote that investors doubt a $1.5 trillion valuation and that the raise could fall to about $80 billion from $100 billion. If AI shares and bitcoin trade together again, that pricing is a test for both. The nearer test is the October consumer price index on Tuesday 10 November at 13:30 UTC, the next data point the Fed will see before its 9 December decision.