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.

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.

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.