Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Price Drops Below $74,000 as Nvidia Probe and Regulation Fears Spark $1 Billion in Liquidations
Bitcoin price traded near $74,700 on Monday morning after sliding to $73,477 overnight, its lowest since August, then bouncing back, Bitcoin Magazine Pro data shows.
Bitcoin price fell more than 2% to $73,477 in overnight trading, its lowest since August. Buyers stepped in soon after and pushed the price back above $75,000, but the bounce stalled and the bitcoin price settled near $74,700 into the New York open.
Nvidia probe and Iran stall hit weekend trading
Crypto was the only major market open when two headlines landed. Nvidia faced an internal investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iranian demands were outrageous as talks stalled.
Nvidia is the bellwether of the AI trade that has carried risk assets all year, so traders treated the news as a threat to the whole complex. More than $1 billion of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours and about $913 million of that came from longs, which turned a dip into a sharp flush.
The stock market delivered a calmer opening. U.S. index futures attempted a recovery as investors hunted for bargains, with Dow futures up 0.73%, S&P 500 futures up 0.40% and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.21% at 5:10 a.m. ET. Nvidia shares were down 4.5% in premarket trading, Reuters said, and some chipmakers slipped after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index posted its biggest weekly loss since March 2025.
That split mirrors Friday, when the bitcoin price reaction to a hot jobs report showed crypto sitting out an equity bounce. It also echoes the tech rout that wiped out leveraged longs last Thursday.
Regulation fears and ETF outflows weigh on the bitcoin price
The other driver is Washington. Reuters tied the weekend drop to fears that a Democratic-controlled Congress will toughen oversight of the asset class, after last week’s midterms and the $6 billion Binance heist.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of the loudest crypto critics in the Senate, is tipped to lead the Senate Banking Committee. TD Cowen has warned that the sweep makes a crypto-backed CLARITY Act nearly impossible, and House Democrats are already eyeing their own market structure bill with a bigger role for the SEC.
Institutional money is voting too. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs shed $1.28 billion last week, their second straight week of outflows and the worst since late June. Those redemptions explain why the bitcoin price never joined the equity rebound.
What the market watches next
October consumer price data on Tuesday is the next test. Economists expect headline inflation to rise 0.3% on the month, cooling from 0.6% in September, and futures imply roughly an 80% chance of a Fed hike at the Dec. 8 and 9 meeting after the strong October jobs report.
Options traders are bracing for more movement. One-week implied volatility for bitcoin has jumped to about 43% from about 33% on Thursday, and four of the six most active bitcoin contracts are puts with strikes between $70,000 and $72,000.
On the chart, bitcoin is wedged between support from its 200-day moving average near $73,150 and resistance from its 100-day average near $77,430, levels cited in weekend market analysis. A close under the lower line would put the August lows back in play, while a push toward $77,000 would need a calmer Nvidia story and softer inflation data.
At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $74,700.
This post Bitcoin Price Drops Below $74,000 as Nvidia Probe and Regulation Fears Spark $1 Billion in Liquidations first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
