Sudden surge
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 20th August 2026.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Bitcoin Roars Past $70K After Treasury’s Surprise Intervention
Bitcoin’s spot price went on an unexpected joyride on Wednesday. As of this morning at 11 a.m. (EST), the largest crypto was trading at about $72K, up 10% over the past 24 hours. That represents BTC’s steepest daily gain since March.
The sharp, sudden rally yesterday and continuing again today followed a U.S. Treasury plan to dramatically accelerate government debt buybacks, a form of monetary easing.
And man alive did altcoins ever rise to the occasion: Ethereum and XRP have each gained nearly 20% in the past day.
What's down
Shorts Get Trampled
Yesterday’s announced macro policy shift coursed through global markets like an adrenaline shot. BTC’s snap-flight from $64.5K to above $71K produced the largest amount of forced short-side flush-outs since 2021, CoinDesk said.
More than $1B in short BTC positions were wiped out in about an hour. According to CoinGlass, total liquidations reached nearly $3B across positions held by nearly 200,000 traders.
Bond yields tumbled after the policy was announced. The benchmark 10-year note closed down 5.7 basis points to 4.647%. However, yields, as of Thursday morning, were back on the rise, causing stocks to move sharply lower.
What's next
Bond Buyback Plan Buoys Risk Assets But Complicates Inflation Battle
Starting early next month and lasting into November, the U.S. Treasury Department will double the size of its long-bond (10-year, 20-year and 30-year) repurchase operations, from $2 billion to $4 billion per move, pushing long-end yields down and weakening the dollar. “These types of moves typically bode well for risk assets, like crypto, because they loosen financial conditions,” Decrypt said.
Lower yields cut the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset while a weaker dollar makes dollar-priced assets cheaper for foreign buyers. Analysts have a nickname for this dynamic: “QE Lite,” a reference to quantitative easing, which is a Federal Reserve technique to inject cash into the financial system.
With the U.S. national debt total surpassing $40 trillion and the war with Iran showing no sign of ending any time soon, bond markets have been under pressure. Earlier in the week, yields spiked to levels not seen in nearly two decades. The Treasury’s announcement targets the longer-duration part of the market. Buybacks tend to occur once or twice per week.
RSM’s chief economist, Joe Brusuelas, said the Treasury's attempt to keep yields in check could undermine the Fed’s effort to shepherd inflation back to 2%.
“The operation changes almost nothing in terms of the fundamentals,” insists Krishna Guha, head of global policy at Evercore ISI, referring to a rising government deficit ($1.8T) as well as a massive swell of corporate debt related to the ongoing AI infrastructure build out.
