Bitcoin drops below $76,000 amid AI spending concerns

Bitcoin reached an intraday low of $75,568 on Thursday before recovering to $76,830.67 as of press time. The decline followed a sharp selloff in US technology stocks, which spilled into cryptocurrency markets and triggered over $1 billion in liquidations across leveraged trading positions.

According to CoinGlass data, approximately $1 billion in leveraged positions had been liquidated over the previous 24 hours, affecting more than 201,000 traders. Bullish positions accounted for $926.8 million, or nearly 89% of the total, compared with $118.2 million in bearish bets.

Bitcoin accounted for $264.2 million in liquidations, followed by Ethereum at $165.3 million and Solana at $33.5 million. The largest single liquidation was a $10.94 million ETH long position on Binance. The losses coincided with a sharp reversal on Wall Street, where the Nasdaq Composite plunged 4.9% and entered correction territory.

The Kobeissi Letter estimated that approximately $2.5 trillion had been wiped from US stock market valuations and reported that the Cboe Volatility Index, Wall Street's closely watched fear gauge, had surged more than 70%. The market commentary firm attributed the speed of the collapse to excessive leverage meeting an abrupt change in investor sentiment, rather than a sudden deterioration in corporate fundamentals.

The selloff followed the Nov. 4 rally, when investors initially welcomed the Democrats' sweeping midterm victories as a potential constraint on President Donald Trump's economic policies. However, attention quickly shifted toward the implications for the artificial intelligence industry, whose enormous capital expenditure commitments have helped sustain US equity valuations.

Investors are increasingly concerned that tighter political oversight, rising construction costs, and local opposition to data centers could undermine the expected growth in AI infrastructure spending. The Kobeissi Letter stated that a ban on AI spending, if possible to enforce, would effectively mean the US surrendering its position in the global AI race to China.