Bitcoin traded near $76,000 on Thursday afternoon, down more than 5% on the day, after sliding through the mid-$75,000s as a Nasdaq-led selloff in chip and AI stocks deepened into a formal correction and forced out more than $1 billion in leveraged bets, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.

The afternoon session extended a morning crash that had already erased overnight gains above $80,000. Bitcoin briefly tested support near $75,400 before stabilizing just under $76,000 into the final hour of U.S. cash trading.

At roughly $75,900 in afternoon trade, bitcoin was on track for its biggest single-day slide since June, undoing Wednesday's short-squeeze bounce in a single session. Leveraged traders who had bought the midterm rebound were the first forced out when stocks cracked at the open, and the bitcoin price never regained the $77,000 area that had held as morning support.

Nasdaq Correction Drags Crypto Lower

Wall Street set the tone. The Nasdaq Composite fell about 5% on Thursday and dropped into correction territory, more than 10% below the record close it set last month, CNBC reported. The S&P 500 lost roughly 4%, and the Dow shed more than 1,600 points.

Semiconductors led the rout. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank about 11%, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF posted its biggest one-day drop since March 2020. Nvidia and Broadcom each fell around 9%, Qualcomm lost about 9%, and Tesla dropped about 11%.

Investors are pricing in a slower AI data-center buildout under a Democratic Congress. Traders fear construction pauses and tighter financing for neoclouds, a risk that has weighed on chip and infrastructure names since the midterm results. Analysts told CNBC that the $1.2 trillion of AI capital spending forecast for next year is now being reworked.

Bitcoin has moved with that AI-heavy complex for most of the year. Miners that sold bitcoin to fund data centers are now caught in both trades, meaning political risk around power and construction hits the same companies that used to trade mainly on the bitcoin price.

Liquidations Grow Past $1 Billion

Forced selling kept the bitcoin price under pressure into the afternoon. Roughly $1.08 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, including about $954 million in long bets, as futures markets unwound positions built during Wednesday's short squeeze. Liquidations are forced closures triggered when margin no longer meets an exchange's required threshold, and long bets made up roughly 88% of the day's total.

Nearly $900 million of that wipeout came in a roughly four-hour stretch after the U.S. market open, turning a stock-led break into a cascade of margin calls. Ether fell below $2,300 as the same leverage flushed out.

Crypto equities followed. Strategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN), and Circle (CRCL) each fell more than 10%, and bitcoin miners dropped as much as 20%. Keel Infrastructure (KEEL), which sold its entire bitcoin treasury for $192 million, slid about 20%. CleanSpark (CLSK), Cipher (CIFR), and TeraWulf (WULF) each lost more than 12%.

What Comes Next for Bitcoin

The next tests on the macro calendar are Friday's October jobs report, then October CPI on Nov. 10 and the Federal Reserve's Dec. 9 decision, a sequence that frames the interest-rate outlook. Policy risk is building as well, with House Democrats drafting their own market structure bill ahead of taking the committees in January.

Traders are watching whether the bitcoin price can hold the mid-$75,000 area that served as support on election night and several times since August. A clean break would leave bitcoin with room to run lower, near its weakest levels in months, and put the September low back in view.

Options markets have been quiet into the jobs print, but the cash market has not. Volume stayed elevated through the afternoon as stocks and crypto sold together rather than against each other.

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $75,900.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Micah Zimmerman.