Bitcoin Climbs Higher as $1.2 Billion in Shorts Liquidated

Bitcoin extended its rally on Friday, punishing traders who had bet against it and wiping out more than a billion dollars in bearish positions.

The largest cryptocurrency changed hands around $77,137, up 7.9% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data, after touching an intraday high of $79,320. The move capped a strong week that left Bitcoin up 23.2% over seven days, even as it remained down roughly 31.8% from a year ago.

The surge steamrolled leveraged short sellers. CoinGlass data showed about $1.5 billion in total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours across 178,777 traders, with short positions accounting for roughly $1.21 billion of that sum.

Bitcoin alone drove about $17.25 million in liquidations on the one-hour heatmap, and the single largest liquidation order in the last day was a $23.59 million BTC position wiped out on Hyperliquid. The dynamic is a textbook short squeeze, in which rising prices force bearish traders to buy back their positions, adding fuel that pushes prices even higher.

The rebound follows a bruising stretch for the market. Bitcoin surged toward a recent high earlier this week in a run that torched some $3 billion in shorts, and analysts have been divided on whether the momentum can hold.

The rally has coincided with a wave of favorable headlines out of Washington. President Donald Trump backed the crypto market-structure Clarity Act at a White House gathering this week and signaled regulators were working to bring offshore perpetual-futures exchange Hyperliquid onshore, remarks that helped juice sentiment across the market.

Bitcoin wasn't alone in the advance, with Ethereum, Solana and other major tokens climbing alongside it. Its market capitalization stood near $1.55 trillion, and 24-hour trading volume topped $69 billion.