Bitcoin surges above $68,000, liquidating shorts as Treasury doubles debt buyback size

Bitcoin jumped roughly 6% to $69,749 on Bitstamp on Tuesday, hitting an 11-week high after the US Treasury announced it would at least double the size of its long-end debt buyback operations starting in September. The liquidity signal lifted stocks and set off a chain reaction of short liquidations across crypto markets.

The move erased $1.14 billion in short positions in a single hour and $1.31 billion over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data cited by Decrypt. Bitcoin shorts made up $677.64 million of the hourly total. Ethereum shorts absorbed $422.90 million and Solana $37.88 million. The largest single liquidation: a $32.18 million ETH position on Bitget.

At press time, bitcoin traded near $68,689, up 9.3% on the week, per Bitstamp price data via Decrypt. The weekly candle opened at $62,832. The coin has climbed roughly 19% off its $57,735 swing low but sits well below the record above $126,000 set in October 2025.

The catalyst came from the rates side. The Treasury said it would raise the maximum size of its buyback operations from $2 billion to a minimum of $4 billion per operation beginning Sept. 9, according to a Treasury press release. The 30-year bond yield fell 9 basis points to 5.19% on the news, a day after touching its highest level in nearly two decades. US equities opened higher.

Peter Boockvar, CIO at One Point BFG Wealth Partners, pushed back on the bullish framing. “This is NOT a debt paydown, it is just a rearrangement of the maturity schedule of Treasuries,” he said, quoted by Cointelegraph. His point: buying back long-dated debt improves market liquidity but does not reduce the government’s overall obligations. The national debt is approaching $40 trillion, with interest payments hitting $1.4 trillion over the past 12 months, triple the 2020 level.

Spot bitcoin ETFs added $189 million on the day. August net inflows are approaching $1 billion, Cointelegraph reported, a reversal after a stretch of outflows.

Two political catalysts sit in the queue. President Trump is expected to meet Wednesday with SEC Chair Paul Atkins, CFTC Chair Michael Selig, and executives from Coinbase, Ripple, and Kalshi to discuss crypto market-structure rules, Decrypt reported. Federal Reserve minutes from the July meeting are due later the same day. Traders have been paring back bets on a rate hike that had topped 80% probability earlier this year, per prediction-market pricing.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, offered a contrarian read on the broader cycle. “This is a clear Bitcoin bear market, and yet we’ve only had a 55% drop, whereas in other bear markets you’ve gotten a 75-80% drop,” he wrote on X on August 18. “That’s weirdly a good sign; it suggests many net buyers are already positioning.”

Not everyone is sold on the rally’s fuel. Stablecoin supplies on exchanges have decreased by $14 billion since May, Bitfinex flagged on X. “Until stablecoin supply turns, the rally stays unfunded.” The CryptoQuant Stablecoin Supply Ratio has risen from 9.82 to 11.69 since June 30, a signal that buying power relative to bitcoin’s market cap remains thin.

On the charts, the golden pocket resistance zone sits between $70,284 and $73,245, per Decrypt. A daily close below $68,000 would put bitcoin back inside the range that has capped it since June. A similar short squeeze in April, when bitcoin jumped above $75,000, liquidated more than $600 million in a single day.