Bitcoin $BTC$71,936.32 extended Wednesday’s advance, climbing above $71,000 for the first time since June. The largest cryptocurrency has added 3.5% since midnight UTC and 11% over 24 hours, having broken decisively out of the range that had held it since July 8.

The price move was mechanical rather than narrative-driven. $BTC spent six weeks between roughly $62,000 and $66,900 with volatility grinding down to multi-year lows, a setup that encouraged traders to fade every approach to the range high.

That left a thick band of short liquidation levels between $65,000 and $67,000. The U.S. Treasury's announcement that it would at least double long-dated buyback operations to $4 billion pulled the 30-year yield back from 5.337%, its highest since 2007, and the resulting bid in risk assets was enough to clear the ceiling.

Once that fell, $3 billion of shorts were force-bought back into thin resting supply and the spiral carried bitcoin up more than 8% inside an hour.

President Donald Trump's comments landed hours later into a market that had already made the bulk of its move. His call for Congress to pass the Clarity Act, a suggestion that the U.S. may buy sizable amounts of bitcoin and the reveal that regulators are working on a compliant pathway for Hyperliquid gave the rally a second leg, lifting the bitcoin price above $70,000.

Ether $ETH$2,289.95, at $2,270, is just below Wednesday’s three-month high, after rocketing 19% in 24 hours. SOL, XRP and DOGE all posted double-digit advances. Coinbase’s Fear and Greed index jumped to 59, a “greed” reading, from 41, “fear,” while bitcoin daily trading volume is up 250% at $59 billion.

Derivatives positioning

  • Short liquidations hit $3 billion over 24 hours against $263.5 million on the long side, the largest short liquidation event since at least 2021. $BTC accounted for $1.67 billion of the total and $ETH $1.14 billion, with more than $1 billion clearing in a single hour.
  • The aggregated long-short accounts ratio for $BTC fell to 0.835 from around 1.05 on Tuesday, meaning more accounts were positioned short into the break than long. That skew is one of the factors that turned a technical breakout into a $3 billion unwind.
  • Open interest (OI) rose 9.11% to $131.25 billion, with $BTC up 7.18% to $23.4 billion and $ETH up 12.36% to $13.2 billion, according to Coinalyze. Notional exposure is being rebuilt quickly after the flush rather than sitting on the sidelines.
  • HYPE saw the sharpest OI increase at 29%. The increase occurred after Trump's Hyperliquid comments rather than during the initial break.
  • Funding rates remain restrained given the scale of the move, with $BTC at 0.0101% and $ETH at 0.0103%. The absence of elevated funding suggests the leverage build-up that typically follows a squeeze this size has not yet arrived.
  • The $BTC futures basis compressed, with the August 28 OKX contract at 7.68% annualized and the September 25 Deribit contract at 4.71%. Spot buying is leading futures, a cleaner signal than a leverage-driven extension.