NBC News projected overnight that Democrats will control both the US House and the Senate, reversing the Republican majorities elected in 2024, and bitcoin’s first reaction was a slide of 3.05% from its Tuesday-evening high to $75,600.64 on Coinbase at 03:00 UTC, before a recovery to about $77,800 by 07:05 UTC (crypto.news, 4 November). Several races were still being counted, and Bitcoin.com noted that the Senate had not been formally called, with the prediction market Kalshi putting Democratic control at 99% overnight. Nasdaq 100 futures fell about 2% at the worst point and had pared most of that to a 0.3% decline by the early European morning, according to CoinDesk.
What happened overnight
Bitcoin closed Tuesday’s UTC day at $77,336.75, up 0.86% on Monday’s close of $76,674.13, after touching $77,981.38 in the 21:00 UTC hour. The slide began in the 23:00 UTC hour, around when the first US polls close: that hour printed a low of $77,299.80, and by 02:00 UTC the price was trading in the $76,000s. The session low of $75,600.64 came in the 03:00 UTC hour. Bitcoin.com’s own price feed put the low at $75,740 at 03:10 UTC, and TradingKey described it as a two-month low (TradingKey). By 05:00 UTC bitcoin had already traded back above the pre-slide high, touching $78,066.23, and it was at $77,801.29 on the Coinbase ticker at 07:05 UTC.
| Hour starting (UTC) | Low | High | Close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 3 Nov 21:00 | 77,723.26 | 77,981.38 | 77,803.01 |
| Tue 3 Nov 23:00 | 77,299.80 | 77,889.25 | 77,336.75 |
| Wed 4 Nov 00:00 | 76,730.80 | 77,433.56 | 77,122.62 |
| Wed 4 Nov 02:00 | 76,032.41 | 77,107.97 | 76,040.02 |
| Wed 4 Nov 03:00 | 75,600.64 | 76,463.45 | 76,368.51 |
| Wed 4 Nov 05:00 | 77,150.58 | 78,066.23 | 77,630.62 |
| Wed 4 Nov 07:00 (open candle) | 77,754.90 | 77,904.47 | 77,770.60 |
Coinbase Exchange hourly candles, USD; Bitcoin Mastery data pull, 07:05 UTC on 4 November 2026.
The peak-to-trough decline from $77,981.38 to $75,600.64 is 3.05%, and the range for the 4 November UTC day so far (low $75,600.64, high $78,066.23) is 3.26%. For context, the median daily high-to-low range across the 120 complete UTC days since early July is 2.44% and the 90th percentile is 4.51%, so the overnight move was larger than usual but well short of a disorderly one. Our Field Guide #75 applies five checks to the question of whether the election caused it.
Why stocks and bitcoin moved together
The move was not confined to crypto. S&P 500 futures fell 1.1%, Nasdaq 100 futures about 2% and Dow futures 367 points, or 0.7%, in Bitcoin.com’s overnight tally, and CoinDesk reported that Nasdaq futures were back to a 0.3% loss after dropping more than 2%. The trigger was the same for both markets: on the Tuesday close, JPMorgan had warned that a Democratic sweep, if not already priced in, could pressure the broader market on Wednesday, especially AI-related stocks, while a Republican hold of the Senate could have produced a short-term rally (TradingKey). Prediction markets had already priced Democrats at more than 90% for the House and more than 70% for the Senate before the vote (StockTitan, citing Kalshi and Polymarket), which makes the Senate the main surprise of the night.
Wall Street went into the vote on a rebound. The Nasdaq Composite closed Tuesday up 0.83% at 25,372.01, the S&P 500 rose 0.36% to 7,568.92, the Dow fell 0.38% to 51,786.72 and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 2.63% to 10,600.4, snapping three-day losing streaks for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq (TradingKey, 3 November close; Yahoo Finance). That bounce came after the chip sell-off we covered yesterday in our election-day report. After the bell, AMD reported revenue of $13.377 billion, up 45% year on year, against Wall Street’s roughly $13.1 billion, and guided fourth-quarter revenue to about $17 billion plus or minus 3% (AMD, 3 November).
Video: a live crypto-market discussion of the midterms, streamed on 3 November 2026 ahead of the results.
What a Democratic Congress means for crypto policy
The policy debate is about the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that stalled in September when a Senate procedural vote fell short of the 60 votes needed; seven Democratic senators have since said they are open to restarting talks, according to crypto.news. TradingKey reports that investors fear renewed SEC and CFTC enforcement and that a Democratic Congress could extend the timetable for the bill or force major revisions. Commentators named in Bitcoin.com’s coverage raised concern that Representative Maxine Waters could chair the House Financial Services Committee and Senator Elizabeth Warren could lead Senate Banking, while Fundstrat’s Tom Lee argued that Democrats, even with both chambers, could not pass anti-AI or anti-crypto laws over a presidential veto. Our own earlier reporting on the money behind the cycle is in Crypto’s midterm money and on the bill’s odds in the CLARITY Act update.
Two quotes in CoinDesk’s overnight story frame the market’s reading. Dick Lo, founder of TDX Strategies, said bitcoin dropped on the Democratic sweep but recovered because the outcome removed uncertainty and divided government makes major market-unfriendly shifts unlikely. Nicolas Quatravaux, head of EMEA at Paradigm, said overnight trading was more about uncertainty clearing than the outcome itself, and that Polymarket had priced a Democratic win above 75% for a while, so the result was not a surprise. Both are market participants describing their own read, not measured causes.
Positioning: options, ETFs and sentiment
Options traders were active into the vote. CoinDesk reports about $660 million of notional in election-day bitcoin options block trades, more than double the prior day, with roughly $420 million of calls bought against about $105 million sold. Spot bitcoin ETFs, by contrast, continued to see redemptions: SoSoValue data show a net outflow of $115.56 million on 3 November, after $398.6 million on 2 November and $643.3 million on 30 October (crypto.news). The first two trading days of November alone total about $514 million of outflows (our sum of $398.6 million and $115.56 million), matching CoinDesk’s figure of about $515 million. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index stood at 34, in the fear zone, in Bitcoin.com’s overnight report, and Santiment’s bullish-to-bearish comment ratio fell to about 0.51 on 4 November from about 1.8 on 20 October.
Levels analysts are watching
- Support: $76,500 and $75,500, with the overnight low of about $75,700 in between, per crypto.news.
- Resistance: $78,000, $79,000 and $80,000, with analysts in CoinDesk’s story citing $80,000 to $82,000 as the zone a durable recovery would need to reclaim.
- Momentum: daily RSI near 39.9 and a MACD line of −1,293 against a signal line of −956, per crypto.news; both are descriptions of past price action, not forecasts.
- Derivatives: Binance BTC futures funding at 0.01, a two-month high, versus a 30-day average near 0.0046, per CryptoQuant data cited by crypto.news; positive funding means longs are paying shorts.
Markus Thielen of 10x Research told CoinDesk that stochastic readings suggest bitcoin is oversold and could rally toward $82,000, while the analyst Rekt Capital warned in crypto.news of rejection near two three-day resistance levels that could push the price back toward $75,500. Those are opposing views; neither is a forecast we endorse.
Video: Schwab Network’s market wrap before the election results, published 3 November 2026.
What to watch next
- The Senate call: formal projections for the remaining races and the final seat counts, which Bitcoin.com and CoinDesk both note were not yet complete.
- Wednesday’s US open: whether S&P 500 futures, which Kobeissi Letter said pointed to an open below 7,500 for the first time since 31 July, recover as Nasdaq futures did.
- Binance’s next reserves snapshot and the second wave of withdrawal restorations, covered in yesterday’s update.
- Friday’s October jobs report, with the Federal Reserve’s December decision still priced as a likely hike in our week-ahead note.
- Our 12-month study:what bitcoin has done in the year after each midterm since 2014.
Sources: crypto.news, Bitcoin.com News, CoinDesk, TradingKey (crypto), TradingKey (stocks), StockTitan, Yahoo Finance, AMD Newsroom.
Method: bitcoin prices, highs, lows and closes are Coinbase Exchange candles (UTC) and the Coinbase spot ticker pulled by Bitcoin Mastery at about 07:05 UTC on Wednesday 4 November 2026; the 4 November candle is still open at that time, so the latest price is the 77,801.29 ticker and the last completed daily close is Tuesday 3 November (77,336.75). Long-history bitcoin figures are Yahoo Finance BTC-USD daily closes (UTC). Third-party figures are attributed to their source and date. Election projections are as reported by the outlets named; we have not independently verified seat counts. Hourly statistics compare the 10-hour peak-to-trough drawdown to 2,894 rolling 10-hour windows of Coinbase hourly candles from 6 July to 4 November 2026.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are volatile and you can lose some or all of the money you put in. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin, any exchange-traded fund, any listed security or any other asset, and the technical levels, probabilities and scenarios discussed are descriptions of published data, not forecasts. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.