Two weeks after the start of a war in the Middle East, bitcoin is higher than where it started.
The largest cryptocurrency was trading at $71,000 on Saturday morning, down 0.7% in the past 24 hours after the United States bombed military targets on Kharg Island, Iran’s main crude export facility.
The reversal from Friday’s high of $73,838 was sharp but contained. Bitcoin gave up 3.5% on Kharg headlines and stopped. A month ago, a comparable escalation would have triggered a much larger sell-off.
The weekly numbers tell the story of resilience. Bitcoin is up 4.2% over seven days. Ether gained 5.5% to $2,090. Dogecoin added 5%. Solana rose 4.2% to $88. BNB climbed 4.5% to $655. All major countries are green this week, even though the war is escalating instead of easing.
The market adapts to conflict in real time. Early in the war, every headline provoked an outsized reaction because no one could assess the extreme risk. Now traders have a framework in which strikes occur, oil peaks and Bitcoin falls and then recovers again.
This pattern repeated itself enough times that the reflexive impulse to sell the stock faded. However, the resistance level at $73,000 to $74,000 remains in place and bitcoin has been rejected four times in two weeks.
Trump’s language on Kharg Island added a new variable to the markets.
In a Truth Social article Friday evening, he said he was sparing oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency” but would “immediately reconsider” if Iran continued to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran responded that any strike on energy infrastructure would trigger retaliation against U.S.-linked facilities in the region. This is a conditional escalation threat that did not exist 48 hours ago. If oil infrastructure becomes a target, the supply disruption, which the IEA has already called the largest in history, will worsen significantly.
At the same time, the $371 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours reflect the bilateral nature of Friday’s session. Short liquidations outpaced long positions at $207 million from $163 million, meaning the initial surge to $73,800 crushed bears before Kharg headlines squeezed just-entered long positions.
Attention now turns to the Fed meeting on March 17-18. Oil prices above $100, the largest energy supply disruption in history and a war entering its third week without resolution make the stagflation hypothesis harder to dismiss.
CME FedWatch still rates a greater than 95% hold probability between 3.5% and 3.75%, but the dot plot and Powell’s press conference will matter more than the decision itself. Any indication that rate hikes are on the table again would hit risky assets hard, including a crypto market that has spent five months anticipating cuts that still haven’t arrived.
