The price of Bitcoin soared past $75,000 late on Thursday, leading a surge in the prices of major cryptocurrencies that began on Wednesday after the Treasury intervened in the bond markets and President Donald Trump hosted crypto leaders at the White House and called on Congress to pass the industry-backed digital assets legislation known as the CLARITY Act. Bitcoin crossed the $75,000 mark for the first time since May. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The price of Bitcoin—the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap—rose to $75,268 early on Friday, up more than $10,000 in the past two days. This is the first time since May that Bitcoin crossed the $75,000 mark. Ether, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap, rose to $2,363 early Friday, up more than 25% from the previous week. The crypto rally helped boost other major tokens, with Solana’s SOL, Binance’s BNB, XRP and the memecoin DOGE rising 7%, 6.4%, 19.3% and 11.3%, respectively in the past 24 hours. Data on showed that short sellers were hit hard by the surge, with more than $1.25 billion worth of crypto short positions being liquidated in the past 24 hours—around $750 million of which were bets against Bitcoin.
On Wednesday evening, Trump for an event at the White House, a day before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is set to hold its first meeting of its Innovation Advisory Committee. At the event, Trump called on Congress to pass the long-stalled CLARITY Act, which is backed by the crypto industry and will establish legal guidelines on digital assets. The president said: “We need Congress to take the next step by passing the CLARITY Act, a fair version of the CLARITY Act…It’s a very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else.” After the event, the crypto market saw a major surge, with bitcoin rising past $70,000 for the first time since early June.