Crypto Pulse: November 4, 2026 — Crypto Rallies as Its $200 Million Midterm Bet Stumbles

4 min read

Crypto prices rallied on Wednesday even as the industry absorbed a difficult midterm verdict in Washington. In Market Briefer’s delayed snapshot at 5:15 p.m. CST, Ethereum led the majors with a 5.92% gain to $2,425, Bitcoin rose 3.34% to $80,391 and back above $80,000, and Solana added 2.24% to $95.47, while Reuters reported that the industry’s roughly $200 million election spending spree stumbled as Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress, in a session tracked throughout the day on Market Briefer’s Crypto desk.

The board below is Market Briefer’s delayed market data, sourced from CoinGecko and delayed by about 15 minutes, as of 5:15 p.m. CST on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, ordered by 24-hour move, largest gain first.

Ethereum’s 5.92% gain to $2,425 was the board’s largest among the majors, ahead of Cardano’s 4.02% rise to $0.198 and Bitcoin’s 3.34% advance to $80,391. Dogecoin rose 2.25% to $0.077 and Solana gained 2.24% to $95.47, leaving TRON as the only faller, down 0.72% to $0.320. Beyond the majors, the site’s top-movers board showed wider swings, led by Injective, up 9.96%, Pearl, up 9.41%, and Stacks, up 8.68%, while Rain fell 9.04% and World Liberty Financial fell 6.64%.

The day’s story was political. The greatest blow for the industry came in Ohio, where Democrat and crypto skeptic Sherrod Brown decisively won his race to return to the Senate despite crypto political action committees spending more than $60 million to defeat him, Reuters reported. The race was one of the most expensive in the Senate’s history and was viewed as a major test of crypto’s political clout after the Senate in September voted against advancing the Clarity Act, due to opposition from Democrats. “We see this as souring the political environment for crypto,” said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with TD Cowen, in a note on Tuesday, as reported by Reuters. The industry did win most of the races it targeted: the leading industry super PAC, Fairshake, whose chief backers include Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz, has won 29 of the 34 races it spent on so far, including Nebraska, where it and its affiliates spent at least $13.5 million to defeat independent candidate Dan Osborn, who lost to Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, a Clarity Act supporter, Reuters reported.

The stakes behind the spending are regulatory. The industry has spent roughly half a billion dollars over the past two election cycles building a bipartisan coalition of congressional allies, Reuters reported, and in 2024 it helped elect dozens of crypto-friendly lawmakers who later came together to pass a law promoting adoption of dollar-backed tokens known as stablecoins, the instruments set out in Market Briefer’s explainer on stablecoins. With Democrats taking Congress, the Clarity Act’s defeat was a major setback and the industry now faces oversight and potential investigations, particularly into its ties to President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. “Where crypto is today compared to where we were two years ago is night and day,” said Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer at Ripple, speaking before the results, though on the possibility of Democratic probes into Trump’s crypto business dealings he added, “I think the writing is on the wall,” as reported by Reuters.

Prices told a calmer story than the politics. Bitcoin fell just below $76,000 early on Wednesday as reports indicated Democrats were winning control of both chambers, then staged a V-shaped recovery as the clear outcome resolved political uncertainty, according to CoinDesk. Options traders were active through the result: about $660 million in notional Bitcoin options blocks changed hands on election day, more than double the previous day, with roughly $420 million of calls bought against about $105 million sold, Nicolas Quatravaux of Paradigm told CoinDesk. The fund backdrop remained soft, with U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs recording $515 million in outflows last month and an equal amount leaving in the first two trading days of November, according to SoSoValue data reported by CoinDesk.

What to watch starts with the next U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF flow print, which will show whether Wednesday’s trading extended the early-November outflows or the post-election recovery drew money back into the funds. Thursday’s Bank of England decision and Friday’s November 6 U.S. nonfarm payrolls report will test the interest-rate expectations that move crypto alongside other risk assets, and several races Fairshake spent on remain uncalled. On the board itself, Bitcoin’s $80,391 print sits well above the early low just below $76,000 that CoinDesk reported, and Ethereum holds its board-leading level at $2,425.

Educational content — not investment advice. Crypto Pulse is AI-assisted research produced with automated data checks; figures are verified against the cited sources at publication time.