Shorts get vaporised, Solana memes add $3B in a day

The squeeze

CoinDesk reports over $4 billion in shorts liquidated across two days, with Thursday alone accounting for $3 billion, the largest single-day figure since 2021. Friday added roughly $1.2 billion of $1.4 billion in total liquidations, hitting 156,211 traders. Bitcoin cleared $77,000, up around 8% on the day and 22% on the week.

Down the risk curve: Ethereum near $2,350 (+24.5% weekly), Solana just under $90 and up 17% on the week, Dogecoin above 8 cents (+17%), HYPE near $73 leading the majors at about 27%. CoinDesk attributes the move to looser Treasury market conditions, with buybacks doubled from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, plus a White House push for Congress to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

And the trenches caught the spark

CoinMarketCap logs Solana's meme coin sector adding roughly $3 billion in market cap in a single day to around $29.3 billion. $PUMP jumped 16.68% in 24 hours, ranking fourth among meme tokens by volume at $286 million traded and becoming the most-mentioned ticker on X. The listed drivers: $1.16 million in daily platform revenue, cumulative buybacks past $430 million that have removed over 16% of supply, and roughly $7.6 million in notional short exposure underwater.

$4B+

shorts liquidated in two days

156,211

traders liquidated on Friday

$29.3B

Solana meme sector market cap

What it means for degens

CoinDesk's own framing is the important line: these are mechanically-driven gains, forced position closures cascading upward, not organic demand walking in the door. Squeezes make outstanding charts and terrible entries. When the fuel is other people's stop losses, the rally lasts exactly as long as the supply of trapped shorts does — and memecoins, which trade on the far end of that leverage chain, unwind first when it runs out.