Bitcoin Price Drop Wipes Out Post-Election Rally

The bitcoin price drop this week has wiped out the post-election bounce, and crypto traders are now staring at a level not seen since the middle of September. Bitcoin slid below seventy-six thousand dollars on Thursday, then hovered right around that line on Friday as a hot jobs report landed.

What actually happened to bitcoin

Bitcoin had jumped near eighty thousand dollars on Wednesday as election results became clear. By Friday morning it was down more than five percent over twenty-four hours, according to CoinDesk, which also reported that the wider CoinDesk 20 index lost more than six percent in the same stretch.

The dip bottomed out near seventy-five thousand two hundred dollars late Thursday before a small recovery. For anyone who bought during Wednesday's rally, that is a rough whiplash, and it shows how fragile the earlier rebound really was.

Why the AI trade dragged crypto down

The trigger was not crypto news at all. It was a brutal day on Wall Street. The Nasdaq fell about five and a half percent and slipped into correction territory, while the S&P 500 lost roughly four percent, according to Bitcoin Magazine, citing CNBC.

Analysts at FalconX and GSR tied the selloff to worries that the Democratic midterm sweep could slow construction of AI data centres, per CoinDesk. Nvidia alone dropped more than nine percent, and the so-called Magnificent Seven lost over one trillion dollars in market value.

Bitcoin has been moving in step with that AI-heavy corner of the market for most of the year. When tech stocks wobble, the bitcoin price drop tends to follow, even when nothing on the blockchain itself has changed.

Liquidations and ETF outflows

Forced selling made it worse. CoinDesk, citing CoinGlass, reported that about one point two six billion dollars of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in a day, and most of those were long bets on prices going up. Basically, people who piled in during the Wednesday squeeze got flushed out.

US spot bitcoin ETFs also saw four hundred thirty million dollars in net outflows on Thursday, led by Fidelity's FBTC and BlackRock's IBIT. That reversed Wednesday's small inflow and pushed weekly redemptions to roughly eight hundred seventy million dollars.

One telling detail: bitcoin was trading at a discount on Coinbase compared with Binance earlier in the week, which is often read as a sign of soft US buying demand. The rally never had much conviction behind it.

The jobs report adds a twist

Friday's report did not rescue anything. US employers added one hundred sixty-five thousand jobs in October, far above the roughly fifty-nine thousand economists expected, and unemployment ticked down to four point one percent, according to Bitcoin Magazine.

Strong hiring sounds like good news, but for risk assets it can mean the opposite. Bitcoin Magazine reported that CME FedWatch odds for a quarter-point rate hike at the December meeting climbed to about seventy-nine percent. Higher rates usually pressure speculative assets like crypto.

Bitcoin spiked briefly above seventy-six thousand one hundred dollars after the data, then slid back toward seventy-five thousand five hundred. The reaction was muted, which suggests most of the damage this week came from stocks, not payrolls.

It also helps to zoom out. Bitcoin sat near one hundred one thousand dollars a year ago, according to Fortune, which put Friday morning's price about twenty-five percent lower than that. A month ago it traded near eighty-six thousand, so this bitcoin price drop is part of a longer slide, not a one-day blip.

Ether has felt it too, falling to a one-week low around two thousand two hundred dollars overnight, while privacy coins like monero held up better than the rest of the market. Meme coins even led a small bounce on Friday, a reminder that crypto sentiment can flip fast when traders hunt for any green candle.

Zooming back in, the next catalysts are clear: more ETF flow data, the next payrolls report in early December, and whether tech stocks stabilise. Until then, expect choppy trading and plenty of nervous scrolling.

What Gen Z holders should watch

Traders are focused on whether the mid-seventy-thousand zone holds. A clean break would put the September low back in play, and the bitcoin price drop could stretch further. Policy is another wildcard, since House Democrats are already drafting their own crypto market structure bill ahead of taking committees in January.

If you are holding crypto, this week is a reminder that leverage and tech-stock mood swings can overwhelm any good news. Check out more crypto coverage and politics coverage on GenZ NewZ for context, and remember that none of this is financial advice.