Bitcoin Holds $75,400 as Nasdaq's Correction Wipes Out $1.08 Billion in Longs

Bitcoin doesn't have its own bid this week. It has Nvidia's.

That's the story of Thursday in one line. The Nasdaq Composite fell about 5%, closing more than 10% below the record it set last month. That's a correction by the book. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped roughly 11%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF had its worst session since March 2020. Nvidia and Broadcom each shed around 9%. Qualcomm lost about 9%. Tesla gave up about 11%.

Bitcoin, which has spent most of 2026 trading like a high-beta AI infrastructure name, did what that relationship demands. It followed. Price slid through the mid-$75,000s, tagged $75,400, and stabilized just under $76,000 into the last hour of U.S. cash trading. Down more than 5% on the day. The biggest single-session slide since June. Wednesday's short-squeeze bounce is gone, erased in one afternoon.

The Forced Selling Was Mechanical

Numbers first. Roughly $1.08 billion in crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, and about $954 million of that was long. Nearly $900 million of the wipeout landed in a four-hour window after the open. That isn't conviction selling. That's margin calls cascading through futures books that got fat on borrowed money during Wednesday's squeeze.

Ether broke below $2,300 on the same flush. Crypto equities took it on the chin. Strategy, Coinbase and Circle each lost more than 10%. Miners were worse, down as much as 20%.

Here's the part that matters for anyone building a thesis. Keel Infrastructure sold its entire bitcoin treasury for $192 million, then fell about 20% anyway. CleanSpark, Cipher and TeraWulf each dropped more than 12%. Those companies aren't trading on hash price anymore. They're trading on data-center financing, power contracts, and whether a new Congress slows the AI buildout analysts had penciled in for next year.

That political piece is doing more work than most people admit. The $1.2 trillion of AI capital spending forecast for 2027 is being reworked right now. Traders are pricing construction pauses and tighter financing for neoclouds. House Democrats are drafting their own market structure bill ahead of taking the committees in January. Two separate policy tracks, one direction of travel.

The $75,400 Line

Now the chart. Mid-$75,000 isn't a random shelf. It held on election night. It's held several times since August. On the weekly, it's the last higher low standing between here and the September low, which is the only reference point that matters if this gives way.

If BTC holds this level through Friday's jobs print, the structure stays intact and the September low never gets tested. The invalidation point sits at $75,400 on a weekly close. Not an intraday wick. A close. That distinction has saved a lot of people from getting shaken out of good positions.

Volume told its own story. It stayed elevated all afternoon while stocks and crypto sold together instead of against each other. Correlation isn't a vibe. It's measurable, and on Thursday it was near total. Options markets were quiet into the jobs print. The cash market wasn't.

The Bull Case Deserves A Fair Hearing

Steelman it. Bitcoin's issuance schedule doesn't care who controls the House. Supply is tight, and every forced-selling day in history has handed coins to stronger hands at a discount. The accumulation crowd will tell you the $1.08 billion flush is healthy. Funding resets, weak hands leave, the market breathes.

They're not wrong about mechanics. Historically speaking, these reset days have marked local bottoms more often than they've marked tops.

But the trigger here isn't internal. It's a repricing of AI capital spending driven by a midterm result. That's an outside shock to the exact complex bitcoin has been glued to since January. Healing from an internal flush takes days. Healing from a spending cycle getting marked down takes quarters.

So where does the marginal buyer come from if semis keep bleeding? The ETF bid doesn't show up in a straight line down. It shows up when volatility compresses and the weekly stops printing lower highs.

My Call

The chart is the chart. I think $75,400 holds into Friday's jobs report and through the Nov. 10 CPI print, mostly because the people who wanted out got out between the open and noon. Then it fails on the second test if the semis don't stabilize by the Dec. 9 Fed decision.

That's not a bearish call on bitcoin's year. It's a bearish call on the next six weeks of correlation.

Watch the miners, not Strategy. If CleanSpark and TeraWulf stop trading like AI infrastructure and start trading like bitcoin again, that's your decoupling signal. That's confluence you can actually trade, not a narrative you've to believe. Until then, the price action is Nasdaq with extra steps.

One more thing. The structure mirrors the 2020 setup in a narrow way. Back then, a violent external shock forced a reset before the trend resumed. It took weeks, not hours. Anyone buying the first green candle is guessing. Anyone waiting for the weekly close above $77,000 is trading.