$430 Million Left the Bitcoin ETFs and $1.12 Billion of Longs Died — Retail Finished the Session 74.5% Long Under 76,090

Bitcoin came into Friday on a 76,088.01 open, printed a 74,888.00 low and spent the rest of the session under 76,000. That low is the lowest print since 21 August, and it arrived in the same 24 hours that spot bitcoin ETFs gave back everything they had taken in after the midterms. What makes the tape worth reading closely is not the size of the drop. It is that the leverage did not leave with the money.

The flush was $1.26 billion and $1.12 billion of it was long

CoinGlass counted $1.26 billion of leveraged crypto positions liquidated in 24 hours, with $1.12 billion of that in longs, according to CoinDesk. That is 89% of the damage on one side of the book. The trigger was not a crypto story: the Nasdaq fell 5.5% on Thursday, its worst session since April 2025, the S&P 500 lost 4.3%, and the selling carried into Asia where South Korea's Kospi dropped as much as 8.8% and tripped a 20-minute trading halt.

Spot ETF flows did the rest. US-listed spot bitcoin funds recorded $430.2 million of net outflows on Thursday, according to SoSoValue data, led by Fidelity's FBTC at $199.9 million and BlackRock's IBIT at $105 million, with GBTC at $49.9 million. That reversed Wednesday's $74.6 million inflow and took net redemptions for the week through Thursday to $869.8 million, as the ETF flow data shows. Ether funds lost about $100 million on the same day, putting the combined bitcoin-and-ether number near $530 million.

FalconX and GSR analysts put the cross-asset move down to concern that a Democratic sweep of both chambers slows AI data-centre construction, which matters for crypto because so much of the marginal demand narrative of the last year ran through the same utilities, power contracts and compute buildouts. Seoul has since suspended a margin-loan collateral rule for three months to curb forced selling.

Binance's perp book got $576 million smaller and twice as long

This is the part the headline numbers miss. Open interest on Binance's BTC/USDT perpetual went from $7.739 billion on 5 November to $7.163 billion on 6 November, a drop of $576 million, or 7.44% in a single session. Size came off. Conviction did not.

The account-level long/short ratio on the same pair moved from 1.39 to 2.92 over the same two days. In raw terms, 58.17% of accounts were positioned long on 5 November and 74.47% were long on 6 November. Retail did not de-risk into a session that closed near its low. It rotated into the dip and re-levered, and funding on the pair is still positive at 0.01% per eight hours, roughly 11% annualised, so the crowded side is still paying to stay crowded.

CoinDesk noted that futures open interest was broadly flat during Wednesday's rebound and edged up to $22.1 billion from $21.8 billion by Friday morning across venues, which is a wider measurement that includes CME. On Binance alone the book shrank hard. Both can be true at once: the aggregate stayed roughly the same size while the marginal positioning moved to the most reflexive venue and to the long side.

Deribit has the week pinned between 76,000 and 78,000

Options positioning is doing something different from the futures book. On Deribit's BTC strip, with the index at $75,788.50, the 13 November expiry carries 33,154 BTC of open interest worth $2.51 billion notional, a put/call ratio of 0.68 and a max-pain strike of 78,000. That is the one contract large enough to matter this month.

The near paper is smaller and far more call-heavy. Saturday's 7 November expiry holds $445 million with 999 BTC of calls stacked at the 78,000 strike against 285 BTC of puts at 76,000, and Monday's 9 November expiry shows a put/call ratio of 0.11 on 6,708 calls against 760 puts. Whatever the futures book is doing, the options market is not paying up for downside protection over the next 72 hours. The full BTC option book is where those strike clusters sit.

76,090 is gone and the 200-day is 1,645 points away

The level that broke is the 0.382 retrace of the advance from 57,800.19 on 1 July to 87,395.67 on 21 September, which sits at 76,090.20. Thursday's close was 76,088.01, which is 2.19 points under it. Friday has not reclaimed it. A close back above 76,090 is the first thing that would make this look like a sweep instead of a break.

Underneath, the arithmetic gets uncomfortable. The 200-day moving average is at 73,242.78 and today's 74,888.00 low stopped 1,645.22 points above it. The 0.5 retrace of that same advance sits at 72,597.93, stacked just below the 200-day rather than above it, so 72,598 to 73,243 is a single band rather than two separate supports. The 50-day sits at 82,050.92, 8% above spot, which leaves the 200-day as the only average still under the price.

That band is where the sell side is aiming. Wintermute's Jasper De Maere named $73,000 and $68,000 as downside targets and said bitcoin needs to reclaim and hold $80,000 before the trend can be called repaired. The 200-day lands 243 dollars over his first target. Liquidation data is the thing to watch at that level: the same concentration of longs that survived this flush is the fuel for the next one if 74,888 gives way.

What flips the read

The bull case is narrow and specific. Reclaim 76,090 on a daily close, then hold it through the weekend, and the 78,000 max-pain strike on both the Saturday and the 13 November contracts becomes the magnet rather than the ceiling. Above that, 80,504.01 and 80,918.01 are the 4 and 5 November closes that started the slide, and 82,050.92 is the 50-day sitting right behind them.

The bear case is already half-built. Lose 74,888.00 and there is nothing but air down to the 200-day at 73,242.78, with 72,597.93 immediately behind it. CoinDesk reported Friday morning that markets were pricing roughly a 70% chance of a December Fed hike, which is not the backdrop a book that is 74.5% long and still paying positive funding wants. The positioning is the story now, and a book this one-sided resolves either through a squeeze or through a stop-run.