Bitcoin rally triggers $1.2 billion liquidations, bears hit hardest in 2025

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By Sidhartha Shukla  The skeptics are being left in the dust amid Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally, with over $1 billion in bearish crypto bets being liquidated over the past 24 hours.  More than 279,00 traders had positions wiped out over that period as Bitcoin surged to an all-time high of $118,847, according to data compiled by Coinglass. The largest single Bitcoin liquidation, valued at $88.5 million, was on the exchange HTX. Overall, about $1.29 billion in positions were wiped out across all tokens, the most this year.  “The conditions for a slow grind higher have been in place for some time,” said Augustine Fan, a partner at crypto trading platform SignalPlus. “Today’s move appears to be a product of that setup.”  Bitcoin broke out of a nearly two-month lull late Thursday, just as US President Donald Trump unleashed a trade salvo that sent stocks lower. By early Friday in London, the original cryptocurrency topped $118,000 for the first time and some options traders were targeting levels as high as $150,000. The crypto gains were widespread, with a host of tokens from Ether to Cardano notching big advances.  Bullish signs are accumulating in various areas, from renewed ETF inflows to a Congressional committee declaring next week as “Crypto Week.” There are also signs that China, which has banned digital-asset speculation for four years, is starting to rethink its policy.    Traders and fund managers trying to parse the sudden melt-up are offering a variety of triggers, ranging from Bitcoin’s lure as a haven from trade turmoil to an influx of retail money and various technical catalysts. Several market watchers said the combination of declining volatility and a drumbeat of positive news around US regulations over the past two months have set the stage for durable gains.  The latest divergence between stocks and crypto stand in stark contrast to moves that followed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff shock on April 2. Then, both Bitcoin and equities initially cratered before recovering as Trump announced a pause in levies — although Bitcoin handily outpaced the S&P 500 index on the way back up.  Bitcoin rose as much as 4.6% to just below $119,000 on Friday, while Ether rallied to above $3,000 for the first time since February, before paring the gain. ETFs investing in both tokens recorded their second-biggest daily inflows on Thursday.