$77,200 per coin: Bitcoin ($BTC) closed late on August 21 up 23% from $62,800 at the week's open, its largest single-week gain since 2023, after the U.S. Treasury moved to compress government bond yields and President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass the Clarity Act on August 19. Short sellers absorbed $2.70 billion in losses by August 20, when BTC climbed to $72,000, liquidating 172,108 professional traders per CoinGlass data. CoinGlass marks it the largest short-side loss on Bitcoin since 2021.
The move ended six consecutive weeks of trading between $60,000 and $65,000. Bitcoin's year-to-date low of $58,000, set at the end of June, sits 25% below Thursday's price. The all-time high of $126,198, reached October 6, 2025, is 63% above it.
| Level | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|
| YTD low (June) | $58,000 | Reported |
| Week open | $62,800 | Reported |
| Aug. 20 intraday high | $72,000 | Reported |
| Aug. 21 price | $77,200 | Reported |
| All-time high (Oct. 6, 2025) | $126,198 | Reported |
Strategy's $14.4 billion reversal
Strategy (NASDAQ: $MSTR) holds 840,447 Bitcoin at an average cost of $75,385 per coin. At $77,200, that position carries an unrealized gain of $1.4 billion, or 2.4%. When BTC bottomed at $58,000 in June, the same stack carried a $13 billion unrealized loss. The combined swing in book value from trough to Thursday's price: $14.4 billion.
Ethereum ($ETH) rose nearly 30% on the week to $2,400, clearing the $2,000 resistance level it had failed to breach. Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: $COIN) and Strategy each added more than 15%.
Infrastructure and protocol
Crypto card spending reached $759 million in July, 2.5 times the year-ago figure per Andreessen Horowitz, with nearly nine million purchases settled through dollar-backed stablecoins. Monthly volumes on crypto cards were below $1 million as recently as October 2023.
TRM Labs reported in its 2026 AI-in-Crime Adoption Index that artificial intelligence use in cryptocurrency crimes rose 40% over the past year, pushing its index score to 54 out of 100 from 28 in 2024. The firm attributed the increase primarily to online scammers.
Stanley Druckenmiller opened second-quarter positions in Hut 8 (NASDAQ: $HUT), Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: $RIOT), and Bitdeer Technologies (NASDAQ: $BTDR), with his largest allocation sitting at 3.1 million Bitdeer shares purchased for $38 million. Singapore-based mining pool Poolin Technology filed for Chapter 11 in New Jersey, listing roughly $10 million in assets against liabilities of as much as $500 million and as many as 25,000 creditors.