Bitcoin traded near $77,500 on Tuesday morning as polls opened across the United States for the midterm elections, down roughly 0.6% on the day and about $30,000 below its level one year earlier, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.

The vote will determine control of Congress — every House seat and roughly one-third of the Senate are on the ballot — and, with it, the fate of the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that would divide federal oversight of digital asset markets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The bill passed the House 294-134 in July 2025, drawing votes from both parties, before failing a Senate cloture vote 49-50 on Sept. 15 — short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and bring the measure to a final vote.

Prediction markets on Kalshi give Democrats a 94% chance of taking the House and a 74% chance of winning the Senate. A Democratic Senate would likely position Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the industry's most prominent critics in Congress, to chair the Banking Committee. If Congress does not act before the new session convenes on Jan. 3, the bill dies and must be reintroduced from scratch.

Crypto industry groups spent more than $200 million on the midterm contests, CNBC reported. Analysts at TD Cowen view a Democratic sweep as both the most probable outcome and the least favorable one for the industry; in their assessment, a divided Congress leaves room for a narrower deal.

A Week of Selling

Bitcoin's price action heading into the vote has been one-directional. The asset opened November near $78,500 and has shed roughly $2,000 since. October closed down about 7%, the second consecutive October decline.

On Oct. 28, following a hawkish Federal Reserve hold and weak earnings from Alphabet and Samsung, bitcoin fell below $80,000 for the first time in weeks, with approximately $356 million in leveraged positions liquidated.

The larger shock arrived the next day. On Oct. 29, attackers whom the FBI attributes to North Korea drained roughly $6.3 billion from Binance's hot wallets, the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. Bitcoin's price held relatively firm, but it dropped about 4% on Friday and more than $1.3 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, a fund class that launched in January 2024, recorded $643.3 million in outflows that day, their largest single-day withdrawal since June 25, according to SoSoValue data. Another $399 million left the funds on Monday.

Bitcoin recovered to $78,491 late Sunday before sliding again on Monday and Tuesday. Traders are watching a support zone between $76,264 and $76,476, which aligns with the 200-day exponential moving average, a long-term trend gauge widely followed by market technicians. Below that level sits the September low of $74,967, while the 50-day EMA near $80,800 marks the first resistance overhead.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which runs from 0 (extreme fear) to 100 (extreme greed), registered 37 on Monday, within “fear” territory.

Oil, Iran and a Fed That Can Hike

The macroeconomic backdrop offers little support. The Fed held its benchmark rate at 3.75% to 4.00% on Oct. 28 by a 10-2 vote, with two officials dissenting in favor of a hike, after raising rates in September for the first time since July 2023. Polymarket puts the odds of a December hike near 71%.

September PCE inflation ran at 3.6% year over year, while third-quarter GDP grew at a 3.4% annualized pace. The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.36% in early October, its highest level since 2002, before easing to about 4.91% on Monday.

Energy sits at the center of the inflation picture. Brent crude fell 7.7% on Monday to $104.66 a barrel after Iran and the U.S. signaled openness to talks, its biggest one-day drop since July, CNBC reported. The move partially reversed on Tuesday, with Brent back near $106.60 following reports of a U.S. strike on Iran's Qeshm Island. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes — has kept crude above $100 and headline inflation elevated, sustaining the Fed's tightening path.

Equities have added to the pressure. The Nasdaq fell 2.9% on Friday — its worst day since June — after results from Intel and Amazon raised questions about AI capital spending, and it lost 5.3% for the month of October. Bitcoin has moved in tandem with technology stocks throughout the selloff rather than against them.

What Comes Next for Bitcoin

The calendar ahead is full. The October jobs report lands Friday, with consensus expectations near 65,000 following September's 29,000. October CPI follows on Nov. 10, and the Fed's next decision arrives Dec. 9. Binance's next proof-of-reserves snapshot, a periodic attestation of an exchange's holdings against customer balances, is due Wednesday.

Options markets are calm, with Deribit's DVOL index near 36.5, a sign traders anticipate no large swings. Seasonality, however, cuts the other way: bitcoin fell 36.6% in November 2018 and 16.2% in November 2022, the two most recent midterm election years, both of which occurred during bear markets.

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