Bitcoin slips under $77,000 ahead of the midterms, and our charts get a big upgrade
Monday, November 2, 2026
What happened
Sunday into Monday was a slow slide for crypto. Bitcoin eased to about $77,900 early on Nov 2 as Binance customers pulled about $3.6 billion after withdrawals reopened. By late evening Pacific time it had dropped below $77,000, with a selloff in chip stocks dragging on risk assets ahead of Tuesday's U.S. midterm vote (CoinDesk).
Other stories traders watched:
- Hacks kept coming. Brazil's Mercado Bitcoin halted withdrawals after about $40 million was drained across 10 blockchains, and later pledged to cover every user's loss. Investigators also followed more money from the earlier Binance hack.
- Coinbase was downgraded at Morgan Stanley, which cut its price target by 53% on a weaker earnings outlook.
- XRP Ledger is set to fix a flaw that could have let stablecoin partners print new tokens.
- Options traders are pricing a bump in Bitcoin volatility around the election.
| Open | Close | Change | Low – high | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | 77,990 | 76,690 | -1.67% | 76,258 – 78,284 |
| Ethereum | 2,282 | 2,255 | -1.20% | 2,234 – 2,302 |
| Solana | 94.14 | 91.97 | -2.31% | 90.73 – 94.84 |
| XRP | 1.2491 | 1.2519 | +0.23% | 1.2341 – 1.2617 |
| Gold | 3,904 | 3,908 | +0.10% | 3,891 – 3,970 |
| Silver | 50.33 | 49.05 | -2.55% | 48.98 – 51.27 |
How the bots did
Every day at 2:30 PM Pacific the 16 bots start fresh with $100 of paper money each. On Nov 2 we also gave everyone a manual fresh start in the afternoon. Here's the day that ended at 2:30 PM:
| Best bots | W–L | Profit |
|---|---|---|
| SOL 15m | 32–6 | +$56.03 |
| XAG 15m | 45–15 | +$29.26 |
| BTC 5m | 28–7 | +$23.95 |
| Worst bots | W–L | Profit |
|---|---|---|
| XAU 15m | 39–30 | −$84.02 |
| ETH 15m | 29–17 | −$52.07 |
| XAG 1h | 11–6 | −$30.76 |
Best hour: 7 AM (+$53.28) · worst hour: 5 AM (−$81.00). Full breakdown in the daily report.
| Round | Who | Bets | Won | Avg price | Per $1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5-min | WickTape | 35 | 80% | 66.8¢ | +4.5¢ |
| 5-min | Terry Calls | 47 | 68.1% | 71.1¢ | -10.5¢ |
| 15-min | WickTape | 37 | 70.3% | 75.1¢ | -0.4¢ |
| 15-min | Terry Calls | 9 | 77.8% | 83.3¢ | +1.6¢ |
| 1-hour | WickTape | 14 | 71.4% | 69.5¢ | +6.5¢ |
| 1-hour | Terry Calls | 10 | 80% | 85.1¢ | +10.6¢ |
To make money you have to win more often than the average price you pay. Terry Calls' numbers come from its own public record and leave out fees; ours include them. Paper money.
What changed on WickTape
Nov 2 was a big day for the charts:
- Buyers vs sellers. A green-and-purple bar above every chart and on the home page shows whether the last 30 seconds on the big exchanges were mostly buying or selling. The same flow now runs along the bottom of the live chart.
- "Where it ends up." From the halfway point of each round, a dashed line and a shaded cone show where the settlement price lands about 7 times in 10. We tested it on 1,278 rounds before switching it on.
- Coinbase on its own line. Coinbase's live price is now a separate blue line with its own price tag, and line smoothing is off, so every tick shows the moment it arrives.
- VWAP and RSI. A pink dotted VWAP line and a small RSI badge were added overnight.
- Faster and steadier. We fixed a memory leak that was restarting the server every half hour and made the chart lighter on phones.
- Discord. You can now join the WickTape Discord from the site, and chat messages can be bridged between the two.
New to the chart? Read How to read the chart, with pictures.
Thanks, chat 🙌
Most of this week's upgrades started as a message in the WickTape chat. Credit where it's due:
- 10kjoeyyyy asked for a "trajectory line". That became the "where it ends up" line.
- Nomadic gave the cone its name, "the cone of destiny". Earlier in the week Nomadic also came up with the idea behind the "potential flip" alert.
- Yktvvv noticed Coinbase seemed to move ahead of our chart. That led to Coinbase getting its own line, with smoothing turned off.
- mmsoc18 and Djoker pointed out that labels were covering the chart early in the round, so the name tag got smaller and moved out of the way.
- fuqlexii asked for VWAP and RSI, and both are on the chart now.
- BlackGemv, DrFish and a lot of you kept asking for a Discord. It's live, with chat bridged both ways.
- DON suggested supply and demand zones. We tested them on real rounds; they're running as a practice bot while we see if they help.
- ostnick asked for patch notes. This blog is the answer: every morning, what changed and who asked for it.
Keep the ideas coming in chat or on Discord.
What to watch on Nov 3
- Election day in the U.S. Markets tend to get jumpy around big scheduled events. Expect wider swings on the 5-minute rounds, especially in the evening Pacific time as results come in. The speed badge on the chart shows when the market is moving faster than normal.
- The $77,000 area. Bitcoin spent Monday on both sides of it. Watch the 24h view to see whether it holds or breaks.
- More hack headlines. Exchange hacks and frozen withdrawals have moved prices quickly this week.
- Fast rounds are harder. When the market speeds up, the bots' edge gets thinner. Fewer, later bets usually hold up better than early ones.