Two weeks into a war in the Middle East and 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 oil export facility.
The reversal from Friday’s high of $73,838 was sharp but contained. Bitcoin retraced 3.5% on Kharg headlines and paused. A month ago, a comparable rally would have triggered a much deeper sell-off.
The weekly figures tell the story of resilience. Bitcoin is up 4.2% in seven days. Ether gained 5.5% to $2,090. Dogecoin added 5%. Solana rose 4.2% to $88. BNB rose 4.5% to $655. All the majors are in the green this week even though the war intensifies, not subsides.
The market is adapting to the conflict in real time. At the beginning of the war, each headline produced a huge reaction because no one could assess the tail risk. Now, traders have a framework in which strikes, oil spikes, and bitcoin crashes occur and then recover again.
The pattern has repeated itself so many times that the reflexive impulse to sell the headlines has faded. However, the resistance level of $73,000 to $74,000 holds and has now rejected bitcoin four times in two weeks.
Trump’s language on Kharg Island added a new variable in the markets.
In a Truth Social post on Friday night, he said he saved oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency” but would “immediately reconsider” if Iran continued to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran responded that any attack on energy infrastructure would trigger retaliatory attacks against US-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, worsens dramatically.
Meanwhile, the $371 million in liquidations in the last 24 hours reflected the two-way nature of Friday’s session. Short liquidations outweighed longs by $207 million versus $163 million, meaning the initial rise to $73,800 squeezed the bears before Kharg holders squeezed the longs that had just entered.
Attention now turns to the Federal Reserve meeting on March 17-18. Oil above $100, the largest energy supply disruption in history, and a war entering its third week without resolution make the case for stagflation harder to dismiss.
CME FedWatch still estimates a more than 95% probability of keeping the rate between 3.5% and 3.75%, but the dot plot and Powell’s press conference will matter more than the decision itself. Any hint that rate hikes are back on the table would hit risk assets hard, including a cryptocurrency market that has spent five months pricing in cuts that still haven’t come.
