The Daily Wolf | Bitcoin dropped back to its pre-election price

Bitcoin erased its post-election rebound and returned to roughly its pre-election range of $75,000–$76,000. Scott Melker said it had traded sideways in the mid-$70,000s for the previous two weeks and was at or above the weekly 50-day moving average at recording time. Crypto liquidations totaled $1.09 billion over 24 hours, affecting 211,000 traders, and had risen to $1.26 billion by 5 a.m., including $1.12 billion in long positions. Melker attributed the global sell-off to unusually high leverage being liquidated. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $430.2 million in net outflows Thursday and $869.8 million in net redemptions from Monday through Thursday. He said Bitcoin was outperforming other markets, which he described as nearing bear-market territory.

The Nasdaq fell 5.5%, the S&P 500 fell 4.4%, the Dow lost 1,833 points, or 3.4%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 12%. Melker said a Democratic congressperson’s call to pause advanced AI development had drawn attention in an already-spooked market, but he did not expect an outright U.S. AI ban. Any legislation would need to pass Congress and the president, he said, and could slow development without banning it. October payrolls increased by 165,000, above the 59,000 estimate, while unemployment declined to 4.1% from 4.2%. Hourly earnings rose 0.4% month over month and 3.1% year over year. After the report, the odds of a quarter-point Fed rate hike in December were near 77%, up from roughly 67%–70%.

Wallets linked to Trump Media moved 4,259 bitcoin, valued in the headline at $342 million, to Crypto.com in two batches. Melker disputed reports that Trump Media had sold all its Bitcoin, emphasizing that the transfer alone did not confirm a sale. The wallets had been labeled as collateral for 2028 convertible notes, and the company had previously described similar transfers as trading or custody management. Melker also said Trump-affiliated miner American Bitcoin had added Bitcoin. Separately, the White House regulatory office logged an SEC draft concerning economically significant crypto broker-dealers on November 3, but its text was not public. The proposal addresses net capital, customer protection, recordkeeping, and crypto custody. It has no legal deadline, leaving the potential effect on brokerages holding crypto unknown.

Eligible U.S. Galaxy users can use Samsung Wallet to buy, hold, send, and receive USDC on Solana. Stripe powers purchases, while Coinbase Prime acts as sub-custodian. Samsung said 82 million U.S. Galaxy devices are compatible, and the wallet supports transfers to compatible wallets and eligible bank accounts in more than 60 countries. Melker cautioned that device compatibility does not mean users will adopt the feature, and that the launch does not necessarily signal a rise in Solana’s price. He suggested phone wallets could offer a preview of tokenized stocks and other assets operating on shared blockchain rails.

Zcash’s NU7 upgrade activated at block 3,543,405, reducing the target block time to 25 seconds and the work wallets need to find private payments. The upgrade reserves 60% of transaction fees for later reissuance to miners while retaining the 21 million supply cap. Version 4 transactions are no longer valid, which leaves funds still in the legacy Sprout pool unspendable.

The episode also discussed a reported Ethereum wallet-delegation authorization costing $15 that enabled a subsequent transaction draining about $2.5 billion from Binance. It separately cited a report that hackers stole $6.3 billion and moved 40% of the stolen cryptocurrency in one transaction. The reported mechanism used EIP-7702, which lets a wallet authorize another contract’s code; CoinDesk’s analysis found a valid authorization signed by the affected Binance wallet. Melker said the incident raised doubts about crypto security, while Nathan from Anchorage argued that custody should be separated, as in other markets. Melker hoped Bitcoin would hold its current levels and move higher, but said the weekend and Monday’s market action remained to be seen.