Bitcoin steadies near $76,150 after AI-led selloff

Bitcoin edges up after Thursday dip

Bitcoin rose 0.2% to around $76,150 since midnight UTC on Friday, Nov. 6. It had dipped to about $75,200 near 23:00 UTC on Thursday.

Ether gained 0.3%. The CoinDesk 80 Index rose 0.2%. The CoinDesk Memecoin Index rose 4%.

Key numbers from the selloff

• Bitcoin fell 5.3% over 24 hours, and ether fell 7.3%.
• More than $1 billion in leveraged crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. Liquidated means positions were closed because traders did not have enough money to cover losses.
• Fidelity's FBTC lost about $200 million on Thursday. BlackRock's IBIT lost $105 million, according to Farside Investors. An ETF is a fund traded on an exchange that tracks the price of an asset.
• Monero fell 3.2% over 24 hours, compared with bitcoin's 5.3% fall.

What drove Thursday's fall

The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% on Thursday. The report linked the fall to investor fears that Democratic control of Congress will slow the buildout of AI data centers.

The slide spread to crypto. IBIT's outflow streak reached five sessions, according to Farside Investors.

Derivatives positions after the drop

Bitcoin open interest rose to $22.1 billion from $21.8 billion. Open interest means the total value of open futures contracts. Liquidations reached $1.27 billion over 24 hours, with about $1.1 billion from long positions.

Options trading turned defensive. The put and call volume ratio was about 51 to 48 in favour of puts. Puts and calls are contracts that can protect against price falls or rises.

On the Binance heatmap, reported with price near $75,100, traders were watching a $74,000 to $75,000 band below the price and a $76,800 to $77,000 band above it.

Other tokens in focus

World Liberty Financial's WLFI rose about 3.5% since midnight UTC. The project said it plans more token buybacks, partly funded by fees from reserves backing its USD1 stablecoin. A stablecoin is a token designed to stay close to $1 in value.

WLFI is still down about 10% since Tuesday's midterm elections and more than 66% this year. The official trump token hit a record low this week, according to the report.

Zcash activated its NU7 upgrade early Friday. The upgrade cut the target time between blocks, which are groups of transactions, from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. ZEC rose 1% since midnight UTC.

Hyperliquid's HYPE is down about 19% from its $96 peak last week. Injective's INJ is up 14% on the week. The report said Nasdaq approved the listing of Canary Capital's staked INJ ETF, according to an SEC filing.

CoinMarketCap's altcoin season index was at 44 out of 100. The report said that was its lowest point since September.

U.S. jobs report due Friday morning

Traders are waiting for the U.S. jobs report at 8:30 a.m. EST, or 13:30 UTC. Economists polled by FactSet expect payrolls to rise by 65,000 in October.

Source for this article

• CoinDesk