Bitcoin closed Friday at $76,943.90, up 6% on the day and 22% over the week from about $62,800 at its start. The event that decided the week kicked off in the market for US government bonds.
What the Treasury actually did
On Wednesday the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its buybacks of long-dated government debt. Treasury yields pulled back sharply, which eased pressure on risk assets broadly. Max Stuedlein, head of partnerships at Sygnum in Asia-Pacific, said the decision is aimed at long-term yield concerns, where borrowing costs have been rising on worries about US debt levels and partial crowding out by the debt that hyperscalers are issuing. Rachael Lucas, an analyst at BTC Markets, called that the real driver, saying it pulled long yields lower and lifted risk appetite across the board. Nothing has rewritten bitcoin's long-term case, she added, and nothing has rewritten its volatility either.
Trump, the Clarity Act and the funds
Sentiment improved again on Thursday, on a late push from the White House and crypto industry leaders to get the Clarity Act through the Senate in the coming weeks. The bill is widely viewed as the catalyst that could pull the market out of the crypto winter that began last northern autumn, though its chances of passing is contested: it stalled over disagreements about its ethics provisions and never reached a vote before the Senate's August recess. Donald Trump met crypto executives on Wednesday, including people from Coinbase Global and Payward, and urged the Senate to pass it. The 13 US-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds added more than $1 billion between Monday and Wednesday, putting them on track for their largest weekly inflows since January. Large holders bought as well, adding roughly $2.75 billion of the token over 60 days, according to CryptoQuant.
But some of the buying was not chosen. Roughly $2.7 billion of crypto short positions were liquidated over the week, on CoinGlass data, as the price ran through the levels those traders could carry.
