TLDR
- Bitcoin jumped as much as 8.7% Wednesday, hitting an intraday high of $69,749.
- That’s Bitcoin’s biggest one-day move since March 4 and its highest price since June 1.
- The rally followed a U.S. Treasury plan to double long-bond buybacks starting September 9.
- Over $1.14 billion in short positions were liquidated across crypto in a single hour.
- Prediction markets flipped from 70% bearish odds to a near coin flip within 24 hours.
Bitcoin jumped as much as 8.7% on Wednesday, hitting an intraday high of $69,749. That’s its steepest one-day move since March 4.
The price also marked Bitcoin’s highest level since June 1. Traders had not seen a green candle like this in over five months.
The rally was not sparked by crypto news. The U.S. Treasury said it will double its long-bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, starting September 9.
That move pushed long-end yields lower and weakened the dollar. Lower yields make non-yielding assets like Bitcoin more attractive to hold.
A weaker dollar also makes dollar-priced assets cheaper for foreign buyers. Analysts have started calling this pattern “QE Lite.”
What Else Drove the Rally
The Treasury announcement landed the same day as a White House meeting between crypto executives and regulators. The SEC also proposed easing registration rules for some digital-asset offerings.
The combination pushed the market higher fast. Within an hour, $1.14 billion in short positions were liquidated across crypto, according to CoinGlass.
Bitcoin alone accounted for $677.64 million of those liquidations. The squeeze forced traders betting on a price drop to buy back in.
Crypto-linked stocks moved higher too. Strategy gained nearly 12%, Coinbase rose 9%, and Circle and BitMine each climbed roughly 9% to 10%.
Prediction Markets Scramble
The rally caught prediction markets off guard. On Myriad, a market asking whether Bitcoin would pump to $84,000 or dump to $55,000 had been pricing roughly 70% odds of the dump just days earlier.
By Wednesday afternoon those odds had flipped to nearly even. The dump side sat at 51.9%, while the pump side rose to 48.1%.
Longer-term markets barely moved. Polymarket’s 2026 Bitcoin price market was pricing a 56% chance BTC touches $55,000 before year-end and 51% odds of reaching $75,000, figures that held steady from last week.
Kalshi traders had been even more cautious before the rally. They gave Bitcoin only a 54% chance of clearing $67,500 in August and 31% odds of hitting $70,000, both levels Bitcoin passed on Wednesday.
The gap between near-term and year-end predictions tells its own story. Short-term traders were caught off guard by a move they hadn’t priced in.
The next price level to watch sits at $70,284, the lower edge of a resistance band on Bitcoin’s chart. A daily close above that level could open the door toward $73,245.
Losing the $68,000 level would pull Bitcoin back into the trading range that has held since June.
