Bitcoin Just Triggered a $3.1B Crypto Short Squeeze

Bitcoin Market Brief here - your go-to crypto source.

What’s on the menu today:

• Bitcoin Just Triggered a $3.1B Crypto Short Squeeze

• One Trump Comment Just Sent HYPE Vertical

• GnosisDAO approves Gnosis Chain for Ethereum Economic Zone

A crypto investor says:

“I only invest after doing extensive research.”

Friend:

“What did you find out?”

Investor:

“That everyone on Reddit is bullish.” 😂

Bitcoin is back above $71K.

And things are getting pretty wild across crypto.

More than $3.1B worth of short positions have been liquidated over the past two days. 👇

Yep. $3.1B.

Thursday alone saw the biggest single-day wipeout of crypto shorts ever recorded.

Bitcoin is leading the charge, with around $1.65B of those liquidations coming from BTC positions.

And the move higher is still going.

BTC briefly touched $71,992 on Thursday, its highest level since the start of June.

So what kicked this off?

A US Treasury liquidity intervention helped push Bitcoin higher on Wednesday.

That initial move started squeezing short sellers.

And once enough shorts started getting liquidated…

The squeeze started feeding on itself.

Short sellers are forced to buy BTC to close their positions, which adds more buying pressure and pushes the price higher.

Then more shorts get wiped out.

Rinse and repeat.

But there’s another interesting thing happening…

Bitcoin short-term holders are finally getting a chance to take some profits.

Wallets that have held BTC for less than 155 days moved a record 43,300 BTC to exchanges at a profit.

That’s their biggest profit-taking move of 2026 so far.

Why does that matter?

Because a lot of these investors were previously underwater.

Bitcoin’s short-term holder cost basis was around $68,700.

Now BTC is comfortably above that level.

So some of those holders are finally getting their chance to say:

“Alright, I’m out.” 😅

The big question now:

Can Bitcoin keep pushing higher after this massive short squeeze?

Or will all this profit-taking start putting some pressure on the rally?

For now, BTC is knocking on the door of $72K.

And after $3.1B in shorts getting wiped out…

Crypto is definitely awake again.

HYPE just went absolutely vertical.

Hyperliquid’s native token jumped more than 20% in 24 hours after Donald Trump said US regulators are working on a path to bring the platform into the American market.

Here’s what happened:

HYPE was trading around $62 before Trump’s comments.

Then he mentioned Hyperliquid during a White House event.

Within hours, HYPE hit $72.28.

It later settled around $70, with roughly $1.4B in 24-hour trading volume.

Pretty big move from a single comment.

So what did Trump actually say?

Trump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig was “working very hard” to bring Hyperliquid into the US in a “fully compliant and legal fashion.”

And that got the market’s attention immediately.

Because Hyperliquid is already a massive player in decentralized trading.

The platform is best known for its onchain perpetual futures exchange and currently handles roughly 40% of decentralized perpetuals volume.

That’s around $201B in volume over the past 30 days.

But there’s a big catch…

There’s still no formal proposal.

The CFTC hasn’t announced exactly how US access would work.

Hyperliquid hasn’t announced an application either.

And there’s no timeline for when Americans could actually start using a compliant version of the platform.

So right now, the market is basically trading on the possibility.

And then things got even more interesting…

Shares of Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed company trading under PURR, jumped 30.4% on Wednesday.

The company is building a treasury around HYPE, although it has made clear that it’s completely independent from Hyperliquid.

But roughly four hours before Trump’s comments, someone bought 719 PURR call options with an $8 strike price.

They paid around $65K for the position.

By the close?

Those options were worth roughly $176K.

That’s an unrealized gain of around $111K in a few hours.

The trading activity was also way above normal levels.

But there’s no public evidence showing who made the trade or whether they knew about Trump’s comments beforehand.

The takeaway:

One sentence from Trump sent HYPE up 20%+ and pushed PURR shares 30% higher.

Now everyone is watching to see whether this actually turns into a real pathway for Hyperliquid to enter the US.

If it does…

That could be a pretty big deal for HYPE.

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.