Bitcoin climbed to within touching distance of $72,000 on Thursday as a rally fuelled by a U.S. Treasury announcement and bullish comments from President Donald Trump gathered pace.
The cryptocurrency reached a session high of $71,992, according to data from Bitstamp, taking its 24-hour gain to 11.3% and lifting its market capitalisation to $1.44 trillion.
The accelerating buying pressure raised the prospect of bitcoin breaking through the $72,000 mark later in the day. The advance followed remarks made by Trump during an Aug. 19 meeting with cryptocurrency industry executives, alongside developments announced by the U.S. Treasury.
Other digital assets also benefited from the broader market move. Ethereum led the major altcoins, rising 19% by 05:36 EST after reaching just below $2,320. XRP, SOL, DOGE and Zcash all recorded double-digit gains over the same period.
The sharp increase in prices caused heavy losses for traders betting that the market would fall. Data from Coinglass showed that bitcoin short positions worth almost $1.7bn had been liquidated, compared with $1.1bn recorded on Wednesday afternoon.
Across the cryptocurrency market, liquidations reached $3.35bn, including $3.07bn in short positions. The latest losses came after bitcoin’s sudden rise on Wednesday had already produced more than $1.9bn in total liquidations over a 24-hour period, with $1.74bn attributed to liquidated short trades.
Trump made his latest comments at a White House gathering attended by technology leaders, senior financial regulators and executives from the cryptocurrency sector. He said the United States was “leading by a lot” in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI).
The president also repeated his view that the US was involved in a direct competition with overseas rivals, with China specifically identified as a major challenger in cryptocurrency markets and financial technology.
Some of the chief executives present used the meeting to urge Congress to approve the CLARITY Act. The legislation, which has stalled in the Senate, is intended to create longer-term legal certainty for digital-asset businesses operating in the United States.
The event nevertheless prompted controversy after Trump referred directly to individual cryptocurrency protocols. He indicated that his administration was working to bring the decentralised trading platform Hyperliquid on-shore to the United States.
Those comments were viewed by some market participants as an endorsement and helped trigger a rapid rise in HYPE. The token added to gains recorded after the Treasury’s earlier announcements and moved towards $74.
That left HYPE less than $3 below its previous all-time high of $76.87, set on 16 June.
LINK also attracted scrutiny after Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, spoke to delegates at the White House meeting. An earlier announcement that Wyoming had moved from Layerzero to Chainlink’s CCIP had initially pushed LINK 3% higher to $9.70.
The token later climbed to $10.86, leaving it up by about 9% on the day. Critics cited the timing of that increase alongside Nazarov’s appearance at the event.
