Ether and solana led crypto higher on Friday as a squeeze on bearish traders pushed bitcoin toward $62,000, capping the market’s first genuinely strong week since mid June.

Bitcoin traded around $61,360, up 2.5% over seven days, per CoinDesk data. Ether rose 4.2% in 24 hours to about $1,702 and is up 9.7% on the week, while solana held near $80 with a weekly gain of 18.6%, the strongest among the majors. XRP added 5.7% over the week to $1.09 and Hyperliquid’s HYPE rose 5.1% on the day.

Traders betting against crypto lost $281 million to liquidations over the past 24 hours, against $159 million in longs, out of $440 million in total forced closures across 95,690 traders, according to Coinglass data.

When shorts are forced to close, they…