Bitcoin trades near $77,000 as US midterm vote keeps traders wary

Bitcoin traded near $76,456 at 06:40 UTC on 3 November 2026, below $77,000, as traders cut risk before the United States midterm elections. Spot Bitcoin funds lost $398.6 million the day before. The vote lands Tuesday.

Those figures come from crypto.news, citing SoSoValue and market data. By midday UTC on 3 November, CoinGecko data showed Bitcoin back near $77,400 on the same day, a sign of how fast the number swings.

A sell-off that built over days

Bitcoin has drifted lower for a week. It fell about 3.59 percent over the prior seven days, crypto.news reported. Trading volume ran near $26.62 billion over the previous 24 hours.

The funds tell the clearer story. US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $398.6 million in net outflows on 2 November, according to SoSoValue data cited by crypto.news. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) drove most of it, with $405.3 million in withdrawals. Fidelity's FBTC took in $6.68 million. On 30 October the funds had already shed $643.3 million, their biggest single-day exit since June.

Outflows on this scale matter because the funds had been the steadiest source of demand for most of the year. When money leaves them, it removes a buyer that helped soak up selling. IBIT is the largest single holder among the US funds, so a $405.3 million exit from one product moves the whole tape.

Ethereum funds bled too. They lost about $140 million on 2 November.

Borrowed bets made the drop sharper. When Bitcoin slips through a price where many traders had placed those bets, their positions close automatically, and the forced selling drives the price lower still. Roughly $100 million in positions were wiped out over 24 hours, most of them long bets, crypto.news said, citing CoinGlass.

None of this happened in a vacuum. Global technology shares fell the same week, led by artificial intelligence and semiconductor names. Asian equities followed Wall Street lower on Tuesday, 3 November. Bitcoin moved with them, as it often has this year when risk appetite drains out of stocks.

Why the vote has traders on edge

The midterm elections add a fixed date to a jumpy market. Russell Thompson, chief investment officer at Hilbert Group, told clients the result was not yet in the price. "I do not think that a significant Democrat win is priced into the price of Bitcoin personally," Thompson said in the firm's Monday market update. His desk, he added, was running light on risk.

Control of Congress is what the vote decides, and that balance shapes how fast crypto rules move in Washington. Thompson's point was narrow. A win large enough to shift the agenda is not, in his reading, reflected in Bitcoin's price. Markets usually price the expected result, then move hard when the count surprises them.

Options markets backed up the caution. Bitcoin puts expiring 4 November, the morning after the vote, carried implied volatility near 55 percent on Monday, roughly 10 points above the 44 percent on comparable calls, according to Deribit data reported by CoinMarketCap. Traders were paying up for cover. Options priced a move of about 2.6 percent over the 24 hours around the vote, against about 2 percent on a normal day.

That skew did not stretch far into the future. The gap between put and call pricing narrowed to about six points for contracts expiring 13 November and nearly vanished by late December, per the Deribit figures. The fear was concentrated on the vote, not the months beyond it.

Not everyone pins the mood on the election. QCP Capital said the demand for downside protection reflected last week's Binance security breach and weak sentiment more than the vote itself. The data firm Laevitas was blunt. "That kind of demand historically decays hard once the event it was bought for clears," it said.

Levels traders are watching now

Analysts clustered around the same floor. QCP Capital flagged the $76,000 to $76,600 zone, which it said had shaped the price on four earlier occasions. A 50-week moving average sat near $75,700, just under that band. Thompson at Hilbert named $76,000 to $78,000 as support, then $74,000 and $72,000 below it. He put the options maximum pain near $75,000.

On the upside, QCP said a daily close above $79,500 would help Bitcoin recover the range it lost the previous Thursday. Crypto analyst That Martini Guy pointed to $76,400 as the level he was watching, warning that a convincing four-hour close below it could open the door to more selling.

These are short-term technical calls, not forecasts of where Bitcoin ends the year. One widely shared note observed that Bitcoin has never closed two red yearly candles in a row, with the 2026 yearly open at $87,500. History here is thin. Only three past midterm cycles offer any guide. Not much to go on. That open also leaves the price about 12 percent below where the year began.

What to watch

Polls close Tuesday. Results will land after they shut. Watch whether the ETF outflows slow once the outcome is known, or keep running. Watch the $76,000 band that so many desks named. Watch the tech tape too, because Bitcoin has tracked AI and chip stocks closely this week. If the result lands without a shock, the options market suggests the extra volatility should drain away within days, because the hedging was built around a single date, not the weeks after it.

Binance, still recovering from a breach that touched more than $6.3 billion in assets on 29 October, has reopened withdrawals in stages. The exchange said it had replaced most affected customer balances, and investigators are still tracking the stolen funds. How fast confidence returns there may matter as much as the election. Neither the flow data nor the options skew shows how traders will act once the ballots are counted.