Bitcoin breaks below $76,000 for first time since mid-September as $366 million in positions are liquidated
Bitcoin has fallen below $76,000 for the first time since mid-September, with about $366 million in leveraged crypto positions liquidated as heavy ETF outflows and the fallout from the Binance hack continue to weigh on the market.
Bitcoin has broken below $76,000 for the first time since mid-September, extending a slide that gathered pace overnight as leveraged traders were forced out of their positions. The world’s largest cryptocurrency slipped through the level during trading on 3 and 4 November, after spending much of the session wavering between $76,400 and $76,700.
The figures in this report were checked at about 11:22 PKT on Wednesday 04 November 2026. At that point Bitcoin had printed lows in the mid-$75,000 range on some exchanges, including a Binance spot quote near $75,855, after earlier trading around $77,088, a fall of more than $1,200 in a single hour.
The forced selling was substantial. Broader tallies put total crypto liquidations at approximately $366 million, with about $100 million tied to Bitcoin positions specifically and roughly 70 percent of the liquidated positions held by traders betting on higher prices. Long liquidations dwarfed short liquidations on the major exchanges during the sharpest hours of the drop.
Institutional money has been heading for the exits at the same time. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $398.6 million in net outflows on Monday 2 November, almost entirely from BlackRock’s IBIT, which alone lost $405.3 million. That followed $643.3 million in outflows on Friday 30 October, the largest single-day figure since June, taking combined outflows across the two sessions above $1 billion.
The backdrop to the sell-off is the record $6.3 billion hack at Binance in late October, the largest exchange theft in crypto history. Binance has said it has replaced about 95 percent of the stolen assets, with about $3 billion frozen, and reopened withdrawals on 1 November. Customers nevertheless withdrew roughly $4.65 billion in the reopening against about $1.01 billion of deposits, a sign of how much confidence still needs to be rebuilt.
Wider markets have added to the pressure. The Nasdaq 100 has fallen into correction territory, down more than 10 percent from its peak, and a rout in chipmaker shares has dragged risk assets lower. Uncertainty around the US midterm elections, in which Democrats swept to control of Congress, has given traders another reason to reduce exposure rather than add to it.
Technically, the break matters because it puts Bitcoin below its 200-day exponential moving average near $76,500, a level analysts have watched as a dividing line between a correction and a deeper downtrend. Market participants cited by CNBC TV18 identified $76,000 and $75,000 as the key downside levels to watch, with $77,000 to $78,000 now acting as the first resistance overhead.
The longer view shows how far the market has fallen. Bitcoin traded near $126,000 at its record high and now sits roughly 39 percent below that peak. It fell 7.3 percent in October alone, its first back-to-back red Octobers since 2011 and 2012, and is on course for a fifth consecutive weekly decline, which would match its joint third-longest losing streak on record.
What happens next depends on a run of economic data and policy signals. Traders are watching the US October employment report due on 6 November and October consumer price data due on 10 November, both of which will shape expectations for interest rates. Markets currently price roughly a three-in-four chance of another Federal Reserve rate rise in December, a prospect that tends to weigh on risk assets.
For now, the market is caught between two forces: forced selling and ETF redemptions pushing prices down, and longer-term buyers, including corporate treasuries that bought above current prices in late October, providing some support. Whether the break below $76,000 holds or proves to be a brief dip below a round number will likely be decided by whether ETF outflows slow and whether Bitcoin can reclaim the $77,000 to $78,000 zone in the coming sessions.
This post is market news information only, not financial advice.
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