TITLE: Two weeks, three shocks — and Bitcoin only fell 13%

In the last two weeks, crypto took three hits that would each have been a crisis on their own.

First came the hack. On Oct 29, Binance — the world's biggest exchange — was hit in what reports call the largest crypto theft ever, around $6.4 billion. Elliptic's Nov 7 update says the attackers have already converted about $175 million of stolen altcoins into roughly 2,300 Bitcoin. About $2.85 billion has been frozen, but around $3.13 billion is still sitting in attacker wallets. The FBI blamed North Korea's TraderTraitor group. Clients pulled about $6.1 billion out of Binance after the breach. And today Binance published its post-mortem: the attack started five months earlier, with a tampered software package back in June. The exchange says it has now replenished about 90% of the affected assets from its own resources.

Then came the election. On Nov 3, Democrats won both the House and the Senate in the US midterms. Traders read that as a harder road for crypto-friendly laws, with the industry-backed CLARITY Act already stalled in the Senate since September. $BTC fell to $73,708 on Sunday, its lowest since August. $ETH fell to $2,060 early Monday. About $856 million in leveraged positions was wiped out in 24 hours. US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost about $1.28 billion in the week to Nov 6.

Then came the AI rout. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang was pulled into a Chinese espionage scandal, with Congress summoning him for Nov 18. Nvidia fell 9.3% in one session, chip stocks had their worst day in years, and the Nasdaq entered correction territory. AI stocks have now erased $13.2 trillion from their 2026 highs. More than $1 billion in leveraged crypto positions disappeared in that sell-off alone.

Three shocks. And yet Bitcoin is down only about 13% from its recent peak near $84,900 on Oct 21. It is holding near $74,000 right now — $74,228 as I write this, down 2.2% in the last 24 hours — still above the $73,510 low buyers defended on Sunday.

One analyst, Ash Crypto, put it plainly: if this were a real bear market, just one of these events would have been enough to trigger a chain reaction of selling. By his estimate, Bitcoin "should have dropped by as much as 40%" after a run like this. It didn't.

Why did it hold? Nobody can say for sure, and I won't pretend to know. But a few things are visible in the data. Buyers stepped in around $73,500 on Sunday, and the low held again today — today's low so far is $73,750. Exchange order books showed real bids under the market. And the fear meter — Fear & Greed at 29, still in Fear — has barely moved in two days, even as the headlines got worse. The market is scared, but it is not panicking.

That does not mean the worst is over. The new Congress takes over in January 2027, and no one knows yet what it will actually do. US inflation data (CPI) lands tomorrow, Nov 10, and a hot number would put rate-cut hopes on ice. Senator Blumenthal has demanded records from Binance, Tether and others by Jan 4, 2027. The stolen billions are still out there, and some of them keep turning into Bitcoin.

Here is how I am reading the next few days, as analysis, not advice. The line that matters is $73,500 — the low buyers defended twice. Above it, Bitcoin is still in the same range it has held for days. Below it, there is not much recent history to lean on. On the upside, $76,000 capped the last two days, and $80,000 is the wall Bloomberg's Mike McGlone flagged: Bitcoin jumped above it after the election and failed to stay there.

I first heard about Bitcoin in 2011 in Pakistan. I had no money then, so I just watched and learned for years. Weeks like this one are why I keep watching the levels instead of the headlines: headlines tell you what happened, levels tell you what traders are actually willing to defend.

What do you think held Bitcoin up — real buying, or just no one left to sell?

Not financial advice.