Bitcoin rocketed as high as $79,400 Friday, capping its best week since March 2023 and triggering more than $1 billion in short-position liquidations within a single hour as traders betting against the rally got steamrolled.

The cryptocurrency is up nearly 24% since Monday, putting it on pace for its strongest weekly advance in more than two years and its highest level since late May, according to CoinDesk. Total crypto short liquidations across the market reached a record $2.7 billion as the rally accelerated.

What's driving the surge

Two forces converged to fuel the rally, according to market analysts tracking the move. President Trump publicly urged lawmakers to advance a "fair version" of the Clarity Act, industry-backed legislation that would establish a comprehensive federal regulatory framework for digital assets — a long-sought win for crypto firms that has repeatedly stalled in Congress.

ITS STRONGEST WEEKLY GAIN SINCE FEBRUARY 2024.

At the same time, the U.S. Treasury moved to substantially expand its purchases of 20-year and 30-year government bonds, a step that pushed long-term yields sharply lower and boosted the appeal of riskier assets like bitcoin, according to Trading Economics. Lower yields typically make non-yielding assets such as cryptocurrency relatively more attractive to investors chasing returns.

The move higher pulled altcoins along with it, with the broader crypto market posting gains across the board as momentum traders piled in behind bitcoin's breakout. The scale of the short liquidations — more than $1 billion in bitcoin alone within about an hour — reflects how many traders had positioned for a pullback rather than a continued climb heading into the week.

The rally arrives during an otherwise turbulent week for broader markets, with a bond-market selloff earlier in the week rattling equities even as stocks staged a partial recovery Friday. Bitcoin's surge stands in contrast to that volatility, reinforcing arguments from crypto bulls that the asset is increasingly trading on its own catalysts — regulatory momentum and rate expectations — rather than moving in lockstep with tech stocks as it often has in past cycles.

The weekly gain of roughly 19% marks bitcoin's strongest since February 2024, according to CoinDesk's tracking, and puts the asset firmly back in territory it hadn't touched since late spring. For an asset that spent much of the summer trading in a comparatively tight range, the speed of the move has caught even seasoned crypto traders off guard, with several analysts noting the scale of the short squeeze amplified gains well beyond what spot buying alone would explain.

Whether the rally holds now depends largely on Washington. Congressional action on the Clarity Act remains far from certain, and any signal that the legislation is stalling again could just as quickly reverse the momentum that built through the week. For now, traders are treating the level above $77,000 as the new line to defend, with attention shifting to whether bitcoin can hold its gains once the short-covering that fueled Friday's spike runs its course.