coindesk.com
Bitcoin rose to just under $75,000 in Asian morning hours on Friday, up almost 8% on the day and nearly 18% over the week, after touching just above $75,500 overnight. Two days ago it traded near $64,100.
Short sellers took another beating, as roughly $1 billion of short positions were liquidated over 24 hours out of $1.23 billion in total, across 140,416 traders, per CoinGlass.
That follows the $3 billion of shorts wiped out on Thursday, the largest single-day figure in records going back to 2021, bringing the two-day total to more than $4 billion. The largest individual position closed in the latest session was a $25.13 million bitcoin trade on Hyperliquid.
A liquidation happens when a trader borrows to make a bigger bet than their money would cover, the market moves against them, and the exchange closes the position automatically before the losses exceed what they put down. These were traders betting the price would fall, and each forced closure pushed prices up and created a cascade of liquidations.
The size of the number matters because it separates a rally built on demand from one built on mechanics. Traders forced to buy are not deciding bitcoin is worth more; they are covering a losing bet.
Meanwhile, Hyperliquid's HYPE rose over 4% to nearly $73 and leads the majors on the week at almost 27%. Ether added almost 5% to $2,350 and is up 24.5% over seven days. Dogecoin gained almost 9% to just over 8 cents and solana over 5% to just under $90, both up 17% on the week.
BNB rose 6% to $660 and is up 8% over seven days. Tron lagged, up 1.5% to just under 34 cents and barely moved on the week.
The rally traces back to Wednesday, when the Treasury doubled the size of its long-end bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, easing conditions across the roughly $30 trillion Treasury market and lifting appetite for risk.
Bitcoin then cleared resistance near $66,600, which put $76,000 on traders' radar as the next level.
Washington added to it. President Donald Trump urged Congress to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act at a White House event on Wednesday, flanked by executives from Coinbase, Gemini, Ripple and Chainlink Labs.