The bitcoin bulls are back.

Over the past 48 hours, the price of bitcoin is up about 18% to more than $77,600 as of the time of this writing. Bitcoin prices hadn't traded above the $70,000 level since late May prior to this latest push, per Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data.

"The strong trigger in bitcoin was driven by Treasury's move to buyback bonds at the longer end of the yield curve," Bernstein strategist Gautam Chhugani explained in a note today. "We are not macro experts, but we do know bitcoin historically has had a positive reaction to liquidity expansion. And this year's apathy towards bitcoin and crypto markets was a combination of tighter markets post Iran conflict, with rising risks of inflation and a very strong AI/semis trade pulling all the liquidity away."

The US Treasury surprised financial markets this week by announcing it will double the maximum size of its long-term bond buyback operations from $2 billion to $4 billion per session. This intervention directly targets the 10-year, 20-year, and 30-year Treasury sectors after benchmark yields spiked to 20-year highs due to nagging inflation and war-driven energy price pressures.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday he has a "big toolkit" to continue addressing the rise in bond yields.

By stepping into the secondary market to purchase debt, the Treasury aims to inject liquidity, stabilize falling bond prices, and pull down soaring borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

Bessent's promise to unleash his big toolkit appears to have only emboldened the bitcoin bulls overnight into expecting more liquidity, which they have tended to reward with higher digital asset prices.

Further helping sentiment this week around bitcoin is a White House meeting with President Trump and top digital asset players at Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD). (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance has a partnership with Coinbase.)

Trump called on Congress to pass a "fair version" of the Clarity Act and declared that America will remain the "undisputed leader" in bitcoin and crypto.

Chhugani said, "The industry now expects either Clarity Act to pass in the September session or a new set of rules and exemptions by the SEC/CFTC. In fact, without Clarity Act, the industry will see accelerated rule making to support a series of new products - 24*7 perp futures on commodities/equities; compute derivatives including compute perp futures; on-chain tokenized equities trading 24*7 in the U.S.; and continued federal support for prediction markets."