U.S. Treasury Buyback Plan Triggers $1 Billion Bitcoin Short Liquidations in Four Hours: how 17 outlets framed it

Short squeeze lifts prices

In the same move, the rally coincided with bearish traders quickly liquidating short positions, and CoinGlass said crypto positions worth $1.75 billion were liquidated within the last four hours, including $1.63 billion in short positions and $124 million in long positions.

Bitcoin led the liquidations with $1 billion in short and $31 million in long positions, while Ether stood at $446 million in short and $46 million in long positions and Solana had $41 million in short and $1 million in long positions.

At press time, Bitcoin rose to trade at $67,983.35, up 5.5% over 24 hours, while Ethereum rose 9% to $2,078.44 and Solana rose 5.5% to $81.16.

Regulatory optimism and targets

The rally also fed into renewed debate about where Bitcoin could go next, with Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick saying in a Friday note shared with Cointelegraph that there is now a risk his end-year forecast of USD100k is too low.

Kendrick tied the outlook to a path toward the $126,000 all-time high after Oct. 6, writing that “an overshoot towards the all-time high (USD126k) before year-end may be possible,” and pointing to spot Bitcoin ETF inflows recovering.