Crypto Pulse: November 5, 2026 — Bitcoin Gives Back the Election Rally as the AI Rout Reaches Crypto

4 min read

Crypto gave back Wednesday’s election rally in a single session on Thursday, as the selloff that hit artificial intelligence stocks on Wall Street swept through digital assets. In Market Briefer’s delayed snapshot at 5:14 p.m. CST, Cardano took the steepest fall among the majors, down 10.06% to $0.179, Ethereum fell 8.70% to $2,214 and Bitcoin fell 6.31% to $75,320, below the $76,000 level it had reclaimed only a day earlier, 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 5:14 p.m. CST on Thursday, November 5, 2026, ordered by 24-hour move, largest gain first.

TRON limited its decline to 0.66% at $0.318, the board’s smallest loss by a wide margin. Bitcoin’s 6.31% fall to $75,320 unwound most of Wednesday’s advance to $80,391, and Solana fell 7.05% to $88.73. Ethereum’s 8.70% drop to $2,214 and Dogecoin’s 8.74% fall to $0.070 left Cardano’s 10.06% slide as the day’s steepest among the majors, and no major coin rose. Beyond the majors, the site’s top-movers board showed only deeper falls, led by LayerZero, down 13.80%, Ethena, down 13.40%, Uniswap, down 12.76%, Ether.fi, down 12.21%, and Ondo, down 12.16%.

The day’s story was the spillover from the AI trade. Bitcoin fell below $76,000 on Thursday as a rout in artificial intelligence-linked stocks swept through markets and dragged crypto down with it, CoinDesk reported, with the Nasdaq sinking nearly 6% and a chip-sector index plunging more than 10% in early trading. The selling followed Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, which handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, and centred on concern that greater political opposition could slow construction of the data centres powering the AI boom, a trade increasingly important for bitcoin miners, many of which have been shifting toward AI computing and which tumbled 15% to 20% on the day, CoinDesk reported.

Traders described a relief rally reversing. “We’re seeing some fresh selling come back to the market as the implications on slower datacenter build out enter into focus,” said Joshua Lim, global co-head of markets at institutional crypto brokerage FalconX, as reported by CoinDesk, Carlos Guzman, vice president of research at digital asset trading firm GSR, told CoinDesk that investors were already questioning the returns on the vast sums being poured into AI infrastructure, that the midterms appear to have triggered the sell-off, and that disappointing earnings from chipmakers added to the pressure.

Crypto-linked stocks fell harder than the coins themselves. Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, stablecoin issuer Circle and digital asset custody firm BitGo plunged between 10% and 15%, while bitcoin treasury company Strategy lost 9.6%, CoinDesk reported. Circle’s business is the issuance of dollar-backed tokens, the instruments set out in Market Briefer’s explainer on stablecoins. The reversal also brought a wave of forced selling in derivatives markets: more than $1 billion in crypto derivatives positions were liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data reported by CoinDesk, with most coming from bullish bets, in the largest wipeout since at least October 28-29, when bitcoin tumbled from nearly $82,000 to $76,000. Wintermute’s Jasper De Maere cautioned against reading too much into a single day’s selloff, telling CoinDesk that crypto has held up relatively well amid the turmoil in AI stocks and that, medium term, it is still “glass half full.” The contrast with havens was plain in Thursday’s Global Close: gold rose while bitcoin and ether traded as high-beta risk assets alongside the Nasdaq rather than as havens, the divergence examined in Market Briefer’s explainer on Bitcoin vs gold.

What to watch begins with Friday’s October nonfarm payrolls report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, expected to rise by about 62,000 to 65,000 after September’s 29,000, with unemployment seen steady at 4.2%, a print that will test whether Thursday was a crowded trade unwinding or something broader. The next U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF flow print will show whether Wednesday’s $74.6 million inflow, which snapped a three-session outflow streak totalling $1.16 billion according to SoSoValue data reported by CoinDesk, survived the rout. On the board itself, Bitcoin’s $75,320 snapshot sits below the $76,000 line it lost during the session and well below Wednesday’s $80,391, while Ethereum holds at $2,214 after the board’s second-steepest fall among the large coins.

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.