As of 8:30am CT on Monday, bitcoin was trading near $85,000, its highest level in eight months. The cryptocurrency rose 5.6% over the past 24 hours to $84,947, according to CoinDesk data cited by Barron’s, after briefly spiking as high as $85,229 per CoinMetrics. It is the highest print since late January, and it caps a stunning six-day run that has much of the market asking whether the crypto winter is finally over.
The rally looks like relief meeting momentum. Bitcoin traded near $75,000 on September 15, right after the Senate voted 49-50 against advancing the Clarity Act, the industry’s flagship market-structure bill, The Block reported. Since then it has climbed more than 7% in five days and nearly 35% over the last three months, leaving it down less than 3% year-to-date, though still around 32.5% below its October all-time high near $126,000.
Then came the squeeze. More than $750 million in crypto positions were liquidated over 24 hours, with $648.3 million of those being shorts, according to CoinGlass data. Bitcoin positions accounted for $360.7 million of the carnage, and the single largest liquidation on Binance’s BTCUSDT market was valued at $11.3 million. When shorts get steamrolled like that, the rally feeds on itself.
Why it matters: this is not just a chart pattern, it is the tone of a whole year of retail portfolios turning. Crypto stocks ran with it. Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, rose 6.8% to $164.44 in premarket trading after ending Friday up 16%, while Coinbase climbed 5.3% and Robinhood gained 5%, Barron’s reported. In a regulatory filing Monday, Strategy disclosed it had bought 950 bitcoin last week for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670, its first purchase in about three weeks, bringing its stash to 846,000 bitcoin acquired at an average of about $75,416 each.
The rest of the market is green too: Ethereum rose about 5.6% to $2,717, XRP gained 7.8% to $1.49, and Solana climbed 7.2% to $115.75, according to The Block’s prices page. And the bid has real money behind it: U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs absorbed $433 million on September 18 alone, led by Fidelity’s FBTC with $310.7 million and BlackRock’s IBIT with $108.4 million, with cumulative inflows since the products launched in 2024 standing near $55 billion Technext24 reported.
The mood on the bull side is almost springlike. “I do think it’s over, it’s crypto spring, the crocuses are blooming,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Monday, arguing that prices fell earlier even as fundamentals like transaction volume and big-firm involvement improved, and that prices are now catching up Stock Watch Index reported. Even last week’s SEC temporary exemptions, which make it easier to offer tokenized stocks, helped the cause Barron’s noted.
A word of caution from my own take: $85,000 is a milestone, not a finish line. The $90,000 level is the next big wall, and the Fed just raised rates, which is the opposite of the easy-money weather crypto loves. Enjoy the green, but size your hopes honestly.
What to watch next: whether bitcoin holds above $80,000 on any pullback, how ETF inflows behave this week, and whether Strategy keeps buying into strength. If the $75,000 level from mid-September holds on a retest, BTIG analysts said bulls can target a push through $82,000 on the way to $90,000 Stock Watch Index reported.
