Good morning everybody.
It’s Thursday, August 20th, 2026, and Bitcoin number go up.
Bitcoin is sitting around $71,880, up roughly 11% in 24 hours. Ethereum is up around 18%, XRP is up 18%, Hyperliquid is up more than 20%, and the entire crypto market has added roughly 10%.
So everybody can reopen Cars & Bids and start looking at GT3s, Lambos, Ferraris, or whatever shitty McLaren you’ve had bookmarked.
The important question is why.
There are three things happening at roughly the same time: Trump’s White House crypto meeting, Treasury moves that are being interpreted as supportive of global liquidity, and a massive short squeeze.
Of those three, I think liquidity is probably the most important.
Trump Brings Crypto Executives to the White House
President Trump hosted crypto and technology executives at the White House and pushed Congress to pass what he called a fair version of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act.
Representatives from Coinbase, Gemini, Ripple, Chainlink Labs, and other crypto companies attended.
Bitcoin subsequently broke through resistance that had held the market back for months and pushed above $70,000.
Obviously, the timing is bullish.
But simply having crypto executives at the White House doesn’t fundamentally change Bitcoin.
Congress still has to pass the legislation.
The Senate is still divided.
And there are still legitimate questions about Trump’s own financial interests in crypto.
So yes, the meeting probably helped sentiment.
I don’t think it’s the main reason Bitcoin suddenly moved 11%.
Treasury Buybacks and Global Liquidity May Be the Bigger Story
The more important macro development may be Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s move to at least double longer-duration Treasury buyback operations.
Traders interpreted the move as a potential liquidity backstop for the more than $30 trillion Treasury market.
This is where the Bitcoin story gets more interesting.
We’ve talked about global liquidity before.
When liquidity expands through the financial system, risk assets tend to benefit. Bitcoin has historically been particularly sensitive to those changes.
Crypto Currently has also been talking about the relationship between global liquidity and Bitcoin, including the possibility of a lag between changes in liquidity and changes in crypto prices.
If liquidity was already beginning to turn higher weeks ago and Bitcoin is only now responding, that gives this rally a more substantial explanation than simply:
Trump had a meeting.
That is the part of today’s move I’m paying the most attention to.
Nearly $2.7 Billion in Shorts Get Wiped Out
Then the move became violent.
Bearish crypto traders reportedly lost approximately $2.7 billion in 24 hours, with total liquidations approaching $3 billion across roughly 172,000 traders.
Short positions accounted for approximately 92% of the liquidations.
And I’m sorry.
As a long-term Bitcoin hodler, there is something satisfying about watching people who aggressively short Bitcoin get squeezed.
I’m not rooting for people to lose their life savings.
But if you’ve spent years betting against Bitcoin while people listening to this show slowly accumulated 0.1 BTC, 0.2 BTC, or maybe took a chance years ago and bought a couple Bitcoin when everyone around them said they were idiots, today is their day.
They took the risk.
They dealt with the crashes.
They dealt with their spouse asking why the hell they spent $10,000 on internet money.
Now they get to walk into the kitchen with a little Bitcoin aura.
I salute you.
Ethereum and Altcoins Move Even Harder
Bitcoin wasn’t even the biggest mover.
Ethereum jumped approximately 18% to $2,290.
XRP climbed roughly 18% to $1.20.
Solana gained around 11%.
Hyperliquid jumped more than 21%.
Dogecoin gained approximately 10%.
This wasn’t simply Bitcoin breaking resistance.
Money moved across the crypto market.
Now comes the harder question.
Does it hold?
Is $60K Actually the Bottom?
Malcolm the Earthling has been telling us $60,000 was the bottom.
Paul McNeal has also been telling me the bottom is in, and yesterday he said if Bitcoin holds above $70,000, we’re not going back.
I’m still skeptical.
But I’ll admit it.
I’ve got FOMO too.
A few weeks ago, I actually texted Paul and asked whether I should sell my townhouse and buy Bitcoin.
I didn’t.
Turns out I enjoy having a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen where I can make coffee instead of living in my car drinking truck-stop coffee while staring at a hardware wallet.
Even if I had sold it, I probably wouldn’t have bought Bitcoin at $60,000 anyway.
I would have sat there waiting for $50,000.
Then $40,000.
Then Bitcoin would have ripped and I’d be sitting there with a pile of cash and nowhere to live.
This is what Bitcoin does.
One green candle and suddenly everyone who spent months waiting for lower prices starts wondering whether they missed it.
Bitcoin ETFs Bring in $517 Million
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately $517 million in net inflows, their largest daily inflow in about three and a half months.
That’s a significant reversal from the outflows we were talking about earlier this week.
Money is coming back into the ETFs at exactly the same time Bitcoin is breaking resistance and shorts are being liquidated.
That can reinforce the move.
Price rises.
Shorts cover.
ETF demand increases.
Momentum traders enter.
Price rises again.
The question is what happens after the forced buying ends.
Crypto Stocks Rip With Bitcoin
Coinbase, Strategy, miners, Circle, Robinhood, and other crypto-adjacent companies also rallied alongside Bitcoin.
I’ve said this repeatedly during the bear market.
These companies trade partly as leveraged bets on the crypto market.
When Bitcoin gets crushed, many of them get crushed harder.
When Bitcoin rips, they can move harder in the opposite direction.
Even Gemini, which has absolutely murdered the bag I bought at its IPO, gets another chance when crypto sentiment turns.
A bear market for many of these companies lasts roughly as long as the Bitcoin bear market does.
Ripple’s XRP Infrastructure Keeps Expanding
Evernorth wants to deploy XRP holdings throughout the XRP Ledger ecosystem as the network considers native lending functionality through its XLS-66 proposal.
This is what happens when markets wake up.
Companies that spent the downturn building infrastructure suddenly have a much better environment in which to deploy it.
And with XRP up approximately 18% today, the market is certainly paying more attention than it was a few days ago.
Tokenized Assets Keep Moving Into Institutional Finance
Tokenized short-term fixed-income products are increasingly being considered as collateral that institutions could use for margin requirements on futures and over-the-counter trades.
This is one of the tokenization use cases that makes obvious sense.
Institutions already own Treasuries and other short-duration assets.
If those assets can exist on-chain and be transferred or posted as collateral more efficiently, you don’t need to convince financial institutions to adopt some entirely new asset class.
You’re simply changing the infrastructure underneath assets they already use.
CLARITY Is Back in the Conversation
Trump’s White House meeting has pushed the CLARITY Act back into the market narrative.
The legislation would establish clearer rules for determining whether digital assets fall under securities or commodities law and divide regulatory authority between the SEC and CFTC.
But this thing is nowhere near guaranteed.
Democrats and some Republicans continue demanding stronger provisions preventing elected officials from personally profiting from crypto ventures.
And that’s not an unreasonable concern.
Trump has a profitable crypto business while simultaneously pushing legislation governing crypto.
I need to dig deeper into exactly how the CLARITY Act could affect his businesses.
You can support crypto legislation and still believe presidents shouldn’t financially benefit from laws they’re helping shape.
Those aren’t contradictory positions.
X Is Reportedly Exploring Stablecoin Payments
X is reportedly exploring stablecoin payments for influencers and content creators.
That would be another step toward stablecoins becoming ordinary payment infrastructure rather than something people only use on crypto exchanges.
X has already been pushing further into financial services.
And we’ve all seen this game before with high-yield cash products.
They offer you 6%.
You move your money.
A few months later it’s 5.2%.
Then 4.8%.
Eventually you wonder why you went through the trouble of moving everything in the first place.
Stablecoins could make more sense inside a platform like X because the company could potentially use them for payments, transfers, creator compensation, and other financial products.
And yes, I still wonder whether Dogecoin eventually finds its way into this somehow.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin: $71,880, up approximately 11%
Ethereum: $2,290, up approximately 18%
Tether: #3
BNB: $642, up approximately 6.3%
XRP: $1.20, up approximately 18%
USDC: #6
Solana: $87.06, up approximately 11%
TRON: $0.338, up approximately 1.2%
Hyperliquid: $71.68, up approximately 21%
Dogecoin: $0.077, up approximately 10%
Litecoin: up approximately 5.3%
Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.44 trillion, up approximately 10%
Fear & Greed Index: Greed
My Take
I don’t think Trump having a crypto meeting at the White House explains an 11% Bitcoin rally by itself.
The short squeeze clearly accelerated it.
But the part I’m most interested in is liquidity.
Treasury buybacks, conditions in the bond market, and broader global liquidity provide a much more substantial macro explanation for why Bitcoin could be moving now.
If global liquidity continues improving, this move has something more fundamental underneath it.
If this was primarily shorts getting blown out and traders reacting to a White House meeting, then I’m considerably less convinced.
And no, I haven’t suddenly become a bull.
I’m still cautiously bearish.
But you can be cautiously bearish and have FOMO at the same time.
I do.
And I know you do too.
Tune in tomorrow for the FOMO show.