Bitcoin Falls Below $74K After Hot US Inflation Fuels Fed Hike Bets
Bitcoin dropped below $74,000 on November 10, 2026, after October US inflation beat forecasts. Traders now see an 89% chance of a Fed rate increase on December 9. Solana, XRP and Ethereum fell more than Bitcoin, and about $360 million in crypto bets were liquidated.
Bitcoin fell below $74,000 on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, trading near $73,660, after hotter-than-expected US inflation data led traders to raise their bets on a Federal Reserve interest rate increase next month. Solana, Ethereum and XRP fell harder than Bitcoin, which is the focus of the latest crypto selloff.
Bitcoin was down 1.3% over 24 hours. The drop took it under the roughly $75,700 low it hit on election night last week. Retail sentiment on the Stocktwits platform stayed in bearish territory over the past day.
What the inflation report showed
The consumer price index, a measure of what households pay for goods and services, rose 0.4% in October from September. Economists had expected 0.3%. Prices had climbed 0.6% in September.
Core CPI strips out food and energy, which tend to swing more. It rose 0.3%, against a 0.2% forecast.
The report carried no annual inflation figures. The 2025 government shutdown disrupted the collection of price data a year earlier.
Fed bets jump
Traders now see an 89% chance that the Fed raises rates by a quarter point at its December 9 meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool. That would lift the federal funds rate to a range of 4% to 4.25%. They put an 11% chance on a larger half-point increase.
A week ago the picture was softer. After the midterm elections, markets gave about a 70% probability to any rate increase in December.
Higher rates tend to weigh on assets such as cryptocurrencies, which pay no interest.
Altcoins fall further
Solana dropped more than 3% in 24 hours to around $84. XRP, the token tied to Ripple, fell about 3% to $1.06. Ethereum, the largest altcoin (any crypto other than Bitcoin), lost around 2.8% to roughly $2,000.
The whole crypto market shed about 1.8% over the same period. It is under threat of slipping below $2.5 trillion in total value.
Liquidations pile up
The slide forced out leveraged traders. A liquidation happens when an exchange closes a borrowed-money bet because the trader can no longer cover losses.
About $200 million in crypto positions were liquidated in the hour after the inflation report. More than $179 million of that came from long positions, which are bets on rising prices.
Across the past 24 hours, liquidations totaled about $360 million. Of that, $282 million was bullish bets.
