Bitcoin charged past $79,000 on Friday, extending its strongest run in years as positive regulatory developments and an announcement from the U.S. Treasury lifted the market.

The leading cryptocurrency reached as high as $79,319 before dipping slightly. It was recently priced at $77,584, a gain of more than 7% over the past day, and has shot up by close to 23% over a seven-day period.

The rally marks a sharp turnaround from earlier in the summer, when bitcoin spent most of June and July trading below $65,000. Some analysts had said at the time that the bottom was likely in.

Standard Chartered is among those now flagging further upside:

JUST IN: Standard Chartered bank says Bitcoin could surge back to $100,000 this year, ending the "shallowest" bear market so far pic.twitter.com/IpyESe931E
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 21, 2026

In a note published Friday, Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered's Global Head of Digital Assets Research, said a $100,000 price forecast for bitcoin by year-end was too low.

"Once investors remember how quickly prices can accelerate to the topside, and we get past the 6 October date (12 months after the all-time high) an overshoot towards the all-time high (USD126k) before year-end may be possible," Kendrick wrote.

He added that bitcoin's bear market so far has been the shallowest on record. Analysts have pointed out that the coin's volatility has been dampened this year.

Bitcoin notched a record of $126,080 last year but plunged soon after following the biggest liquidation event in the history of crypto. Over $19 billion in leveraged bets were closed, sending shockwaves through the market. Such events unfold as exchanges forcibly close leveraged positions when prices move against traders, a mechanism that can deepen the downturns that trigger them.

A number of factors have hurt bitcoin's price since then, including the Federal Reserve's reluctance to lower interest rates and geopolitical headwinds such as war in the Middle East.

More recently, positive regulatory news has helped the coin. While a vote on the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has been delayed until September, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the bill was a "very, very powerful" piece of legislation and urged lawmakers to get it over the line.

The proposed law will establish a framework for distinguishing between digital assets that are securities, commodities, or payment stablecoins — legislation that the crypto industry has long called for. That classification matters because it determines whether the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has primary jurisdiction over a token, a boundary that has fueled years of enforcement actions, court battles and gray-zone operating conditions for crypto firms.

Earlier this week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department would at least double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. The news sent yields lower; lower long-term yields reduce the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally support risk-on sentiment. The Treasury revived regular buyback operations in 2024 — its first such program in more than two decades — as a tool for supporting liquidity in the U.S. government bond market.