Bitcoin Jumps More Than 25% This Week as Shorts Get Squeezed and Washington Pushes Crypto Rules

Bitcoin just had its best week in months. The token hit an intraday high of $79,500 on Friday, August 21, before pulling back to roughly $77,700, according to Euronews. That puts it up more than 25% since Monday and marks a sharp reversal after six straight weeks stuck between $62,000 and $66,000.

Context matters here. Bitcoin peaked near $126,000 last October. By early July it had fallen more than 50% off that high, bottoming around $57,600, per Euronews. Traders spent months betting the slump would continue, building up short positions. When the price broke higher this week, those bets blew up, forcing a wave of short covering that added fuel to the climb.

BNN Bloomberg, citing AFP wire reporting also carried by CTV News, put Friday's gain at 6.9% to $77,675.94, the highest level since May, and noted this was the third straight day Bitcoin jumped more than 5%. Both outlets ran identical wire copy, so this counts as one data point, not two independent confirmations.

Three things hit at once

The rally didn't come from nowhere. Three separate developments converged in the same week.

First, the U.S. Treasury doubled the size of its bond buybacks to calm a bond market where the 30-year yield had spiked to levels last seen in 2007, according to Euronews. When yields climbed back anyway, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed Thursday to expand the buybacks even further. Lower yields make safe assets less attractive and push money into riskier bets like Bitcoin, eToro U.S. investment analyst Bret Kenwell told BNN Bloomberg. "Falling Treasury yields and short liquidations added fuel to the rally," Kenwell said.

Second, the SEC filed a proposal called "Regulation Crypto Assets" on Tuesday, offering crypto issuers lighter registration requirements, Euronews reported.

Third, President Trump hosted Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, Ripple's Brad Garlinghouse, the Winklevoss twins from Gemini, and other industry executives at the White House on Wednesday, pushing Congress to pass the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, according to Euronews. Kenwell credited that meeting directly: "Renewed optimism around crypto progress in Washington helped light a fire under Bitcoin."

The bill still isn't law

The CLARITY Act would split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It cleared the House last year but remains stuck in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle scheduled for September 15, according to Euronews. That vote has not happened yet and is not guaranteed to succeed.

The Epoch Times reported back on July 13 that Trump had urged the Senate to pass the bill "to honor Lindsey Graham," indicating this has been a stated administration priority for at least six weeks before this week's rally. The White House push isn't new. What's new is the market's reaction to it landing at the same time as the Treasury liquidity move.

Short squeezes and regulatory risk

Short squeezes are mechanical, not fundamental. When a huge chunk of the market is betting against an asset and the price moves the wrong way, those traders are forced to buy back in to cover losses, which pushes the price up further regardless of whether anything actually changed about Bitcoin's long-term value. Euronews itself frames this week's move as shorts getting "squeezed," not as a verdict on crypto's staying power.

A fair skeptic would point out that regulatory proposals and White House meetings are not the same as passed law. The SEC's "Regulation Crypto Assets" is a proposal, not a final rule. The CLARITY Act is stalled, not enacted. Betting a 25% weekly gain on legislation that still needs 60 Senate votes it may not get is a real risk, and nothing in the sourcing here suggests that vote is a lock.

On the corporate side, Coinbase shares rode the rally, according to Fox News, which paired the crypto move with Moderna's 17% jump on cancer vaccine trial results with Merck in the same market segment. These are two unrelated stories bundled into one market wrap, not a causal link between them.

The Senate procedural vote on September 15 is the next real checkpoint. If the CLARITY Act fails to clear 60 votes, the regulatory-clarity narrative driving part of this week's rally takes a direct hit. If Treasury yields stabilize and the short squeeze fully unwinds, the question becomes whether Bitcoin holds anywhere near $77,000 or slides back toward the $62,000-to-$66,000 range it spent six weeks trapped in.