Thirty-six hours. That's roughly how long Bitcoin held the $80,000 level it reclaimed at Wednesday's Wall Street open. By Thursday's session it was back under $76,000, and the low print, $75,463 on Bitstamp, was the weakest reading since Sept. 16.

The drop under $76,000 arrived alongside a tech-stock rout. I'd treat them as one move, not two.

How the rally came apart

Wednesday's bounce was real enough. As Cointelegraph reported, risk assets caught a bid after Democrats flipped seven Senate seats and 25 House seats, and WTI crude slid below $93 on hopes of an end to the US-Iran conflict. S&P 500 futures climbed from 7,490 to 7,690. Bitcoin gained more than 4%.

Then Thursday. The S&P 500 shed about 2.7% and the Nasdaq Composite lost more than 4%, touching its lowest level since July 29. Oil bounced back above $90 after reports of fresh tanker strikes in the Middle East. Bitcoin dropped over 6% at the worst point. CoinGlass data put liquidations near $500 million in the first hour of US trading, and the 24-hour tally approached $850 million.

Squeeze, then reversal

I never fully trusted Wednesday's buying, and the numbers show why. According to Decrypt, about $378 million of shorts were force-closed in an hour as Bitcoin pushed through $80,000. Futures data pointed to traders repositioning, not fresh money arriving. A short squeeze lifts price. It doesn't prove conviction.

Thursday ran the same machinery backward. Exchanges close underfunded longs automatically as price falls, and that selling feeds the next leg down. Decrypt counted roughly $428 million in longs wiped out within one hour.

The equity trigger was AI. Semiconductor names took the first hit (the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell about 8%), and CoreWeave and Nebius dropped by double digits. Investors are weighing what Democratic control means for the data-center build-out. Voters in at least 29 US jurisdictions backed restrictions on such projects, though not every measure binds. UBS estimates pauses could threaten 30% of planned 2028 US data-center capacity additions, per Reuters.

Nobody agrees on how much of this is political. Economist Mohamed El-Erian said he's less sure than most that the shift in Congress will actually slow tech. Bitwise Europe's André Dragosch took a different tack in his comments to Decrypt: in his view, markets had already absorbed a Democratic win before the votes were counted, so the result itself carried little new information. My read: the election was the match, and the AI-spending doubts were the dry brush. The market had already shed about $300 billion in value over the prior month, amid worries about AI outlays, higher borrowing costs and last week's multibillion-dollar Binance hack.

The levels in play

The chart is in an awkward spot. Bitcoin briefly dipped below its 50-week simple moving average at $75,733 and is sitting near the bottom of a one-month range. Decrypt flagged a possible bearish engulfing candle on the daily chart. Thursday's candle hadn't closed, though, so the pattern is unconfirmed. Next support sits at $75,000.

Trader Rekt Capital noted the resemblance to May, when choppy trading around $80,000 broke down into a low of $57,000 in late June. One analogy, not a forecast.

The macro calendar matters more than any candle. Futures pricing leans toward the Federal Reserve raising rates again in December, and Friday's October jobs report could shift those odds. CoinShares' James Butterfill argued that real yields, dollar liquidity and ETF flows still outweigh the election for Bitcoin. Thursday did nothing to disprove him.

The new Congress doesn't take office until January, so the stalled Clarity Act stays in limbo for now. Watch the jobs print Friday, then whether $75,000 holds on a closing basis. If it doesn't, the May comparison stops being a curiosity. Thirty-six hours of $80,000 was a short lease.