Bitcoin Drops Below $76,500 as $460 Million in Liquidations Erase Its Post-Election Rally
Key Takeaways
- •Bitcoin fell below $76,500 on Thursday, November 5, after trading above $80,000 earlier in the day following the Democratic victory in both chambers of Congress.
- •CoinGlass recorded $460.51 million in liquidations within a single hour, with long positions accounting for $432.73 million of that total.
- •Total liquidations over 24 hours reached $722.33 million across 146,729 traders, with the largest single order being a $6.17 million BTCUSDT position on Binance.
- •The Nasdaq dropped 3.6% and the S&P 500 fell 2.1% as US equities opened during crypto's worst hour, giving back their own post-election gains.
- •Most major tokens declined over 24 hours, led by Hyperliquid's 7.76% loss, while Monero was the only listed coin still up on the week at 3.31%.
Bitcoin fell below $76,500 on Thursday, November 5, handing back nearly all of its post-midterm-election rally as roughly $460 million in leveraged positions — 94% of them longs — were liquidated within a single hour. The reversal in crypto coincided with a sharp turn on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq dropped 3.6% during crypto's worst hour of the session.
CoinGlass, a service that aggregates liquidation data across major crypto exchanges, showed $460.51 million in liquidations over the previous hour as of 15:25 UTC, while Yahoo Finance's live markets coverage tracked US stocks giving back their own post-election gains.
A Rally That Lasted About a Day
Bitcoin had climbed above $80,000 by 03:00 UTC on Thursday after Democrats won both chambers of Congress, as covered in Coindoo's report on the post-vote rally. Ethereum, BNB and XRP rose with it.
Measured against those early-Thursday readings, Bitcoin is down about 5.1%, roughly cancelling its gain. Ethereum is down about 6.1%, XRP about 3.8% and BNB about 3.1%. The comparison mixes sources — Binance spot data for Bitcoin's earlier price and CoinMarketCap for the rest — so the figures are approximate.
The Hour That Did the Damage
A liquidation is the automatic closure of a leveraged position once losses eat through the trader's collateral. Each forced sale pushes the price lower, which can trigger the next closure, and that chain is how a moderate drop accelerates.
CoinGlass counted $722.33 million in liquidations across 146,729 traders over the past 24 hours. Of that total, $460.51 million landed in the hour to 15:25 UTC, and $432.73 million of the hourly figure came from long positions — bets on rising prices. The largest single liquidation was a $6.17 million order in the BTCUSDT pair — Bitcoin quoted against the Tether stablecoin — on Binance.
The timeline is lopsided. The three hours before that hour added only about $69 million combined, and the latest hour accounts for about 83% of everything liquidated over the past 12 hours.
The mix flipped as well. In the first half of the 24-hour window, the period that included the post-vote bounce, short positions made up about 28% of liquidations. In the latest 12 hours, their share fell below 8%.
Selling driven by holders deciding to exit tends to spread across a session. A drop compressed into one hour, and made almost entirely of long liquidations, fits forced selling far better.
Where the Losses Landed
Top cryptocurrencies by 24-hour loss, per CoinMarketCap at 15:40 UTC on November 5, 2026 (stablecoins excluded):
| Token | Price | 1h Change | 24h Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperliquid (HYPE) | $79.28 | -2.47% | -7.76% |
| Ethereum (ETH) | $2,279 | -3.79% | -6.48% |
| Dogecoin (DOGE) | $0.07260 | -3.78% | -6.21% |
| Solana (SOL) | $91.09 | -4.01% | -5.81% |
| Zcash (ZEC) | $1,247 | -3.68% | -5.53% |
| Bitcoin (BTC) | $76,457 | -3.31% | -5.23% |
| XRP | $1.25 | -3.03% | -4.67% |
| Monero (XMR) | $622 | -2.12% | -3.26% |
| BNB | $694 | -2.06% | -3.13% |
| TRON (TRX) | $0.3163 | -0.49% | -1.13% |
For most of the large caps, the hour to 15:40 UTC carried the bulk of the daily move. More than 60% of Bitcoin's 24-hour decline came in that hour, as did about two-thirds of Solana's and Zcash's.
Hyperliquid, the token of a decentralized trading platform of the same name, broke the pattern. Only about a third of its daily loss came in the latest hour, which suggests the token was already under its own selling pressure before the liquidation wave hit. At the other end, TRON barely moved, and Monero is the only coin in the group still up on the week, by 3.31%.
Wall Street Turned at the Same Time
Crypto did not rally alone on Wednesday. The Dow gained 3% in its best session of 2026, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose 1.6% and 1.4%, according to Yahoo Finance's Wednesday market coverage.
Thursday unwound that move. US trading opened at 14:30 UTC, inside crypto's worst hour, and shortly after 10:20 a.m. New York time Yahoo Finance reported the S&P 500 down 2.1% and the Nasdaq down 3.6%, with semiconductor stocks leading the decline. Its coverage also listed a rebound in oil and the war in Iran among the pressures on the session.
Shared timing does not prove that equities caused the crypto drop. It does make a crypto-specific explanation harder to sustain: both markets rose on the same news and fell back together the next day, and leverage turned crypto's share of the reversal into forced selling.
Profit-Taking and Policy Doubts
Leverage and equities are not the only candidates. Traders who bought Wednesday's bounce had a quick gain to protect, and some of Thursday's selling may simply be profit-taking. Price data cannot reveal a seller's motive, so the figures above can neither confirm nor rule out that explanation.
The policy implications of a Democratic Congress were already known on Wednesday, when prices rose. Uncertainty over crypto legislation may color sentiment, but it does not explain why the selling compressed into a single hour.
What Would Test the Explanation
The rest of Thursday's US session offers a direct check. If crypto keeps tracking the Nasdaq into the 21:00 UTC close, the cross-market reading holds. If crypto keeps falling after liquidations fade and stocks stabilize, selling by holders, rather than forced closures, would be doing the work.
Source: Coindoo
