Bitcoin climbed to nearly $73,000 on Thursday, pushing the price back above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025 — roughly nine months since the indicator was last breached to the upside. The move caps a rapid recovery, with BTC gaining more than 13% since Wednesday, when the U.S. Treasury Department's buyback announcement first hit markets.
The 200-day moving average is one of the more closely watched trend indicators in crypto markets, since a sustained break above it has historically signaled a shift from a longer-term downtrend toward renewed bullish momentum. Bitcoin last traded above the line before setting an all-time high beyond $126,000 roughly a month prior to November 2025, meaning Thursday's move effectively closes out a nine-month stretch below the indicator.
Technicians treat a 200-day reclaim differently from shorter-term breakouts precisely because of how much price history it smooths over — a break of this magnitude typically requires sustained buying pressure rather than a single day's momentum, which is part of why traders have been watching this level closely as bitcoin worked through its months-long slide.
Treasury liquidity move is doing the heavy lifting
The catalyst behind the move was the Treasury's decision to at least double the size of its liquidity-support buybacks for longer-dated Treasury securities, lifting the per-operation ceiling from $2 billion to at least $4 billion starting September 9. The larger buybacks initially pulled long-term yields lower and boosted risk appetite broadly, a dynamic that showed up not just in bitcoin but across equities and gold on the same day. Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick pointed to the announcement as a reason the rally could have legs, suggesting it could “fuel a broader Bitcoin rally toward $100,000 by year-end.”
A price target that has already moved once this year
Kendrick's $100,000 year-end call is itself a marker of how volatile 2026 forecasts have been: the bank had set an original target of $300,000 for the year before cutting it to $150,000 late last year and then to $100,000 in February, with Kendrick warning at the time of a possible dip toward $50,000 before any recovery took hold. Thursday's move above the 200-day average is the first real technical confirmation that the recovery leg of that call may be starting to play out, though Kendrick's own longer-range view — a $500,000 bitcoin by 2030 — remains well out in front of where the market sits today.
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The buyback program itself is a symptom of a bond market under strain from the same debt dynamics behind the U.S. national debt's recent climb past $40 trillion, and Treasury has said it will provide more detail on future buyback sizing at its next quarterly refunding on November 4. Until then, bitcoin's ability to hold above its 200-day average — rather than the initial spike itself — will likely be the clearer signal of whether this rally has staying power.
