Bitcoin price steadies as oil briefly surpasses $100

When oil markets surged above $100 a barrel in the opening days of the US-Israel-Iran conflict, the world held its breath. Bitcoin barely moved. 

Now, as crude dips back below $90 and the conflict enters what may be its most unpredictable phase yet, BTC is holding the same line; steady near $70,000, apparently unmoved by a geopolitical situation that is, if anything, getting more complicated rather than less.

The conflict has already reshaped global energy markets, triggered the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and sent shockwaves through Asian equities. And yet Bitcoin, now increasingly tethered to the U.S. institutional financial system through spot ETFs and mainstream adoption, has traded more like a quiet corner of Wall Street.

That calm is now being tested by a significant shift in Iran's strategic posture, and by growing questions about whether the U.S. administration's public account of the war bears any relationship to what is actually happening.

Iran shifts strategy

The most significant development of the past 24 hours has not come from the battlefield, but from Iran's declared intentions. Iranian military officials have formally announced a shift from ‘reciprocal hits,’ the tit-for-tat logic that characterised the conflict's opening phase, to what they are now calling ‘continuous strikes.’ 

The language may signal that Iran is no longer responding to provocations, instead initiating them on its own schedule.

Accompanying that shift is an explicit economic threat. Iran has warned it will drive oil prices to $200 a barrel, a level that would trigger a global recession by most economic assessments, and has declared that it will not permit even a single litre of oil to reach the United States, Israel or their partners. 

An Iranian military spokesperson went further, stating that any vessel or tanker bound for those destinations would constitute a legitimate military target.

Oil prices are trading below $90 a barrel, still well below the original peak reached earlier in the conflict, but rising again as markets price in the possibility that Iran is not bluffing. If the threat is carried out at scale, the consequences for global supply could dwarf anything seen so far. 

Saudi Aramco has already warned of ‘catastrophic consequences’ for global oil markets from the current disruption; a deliberate, sustained Iranian campaign to interdict all tanker traffic to US-aligned nations would represent an entirely different order of magnitude.

The Strait of Hormuz, already effectively closed since early March, is also becoming more dangerous in a new way. U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran has begun laying mines in the waterway, a development that shifts the risk calculus for any attempt to reopen shipping lanes through naval escort or force. 

Officials have acknowledged uncertainty about how many mines have been deployed, which itself is significant. For context, the presence of even a small number of uncharted mines could be enough to deter all commercial shipping while also complicating any military operation.

Trump says war nearly over

Into this deteriorating picture steps President Trump, who has offered a notably different version of events. Speaking publicly on Wednesday, Trump said the war would end ‘soon’ because there is ‘practically nothing left to target.’ He elaborated: ‘Little this and that…Any time I want it to end, it will end.’

The confidence is striking. The evidence for it is harder to find.

Israeli and US officials are simultaneously telling journalists they are preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes, a timeline that places the end of major military operations around the end of March at the earliest. That's not ‘soon’ in any conventional sense, and it sits in open tension with Trump's public messaging.

There are other contradictions. Trump claimed earlier this week that Iran's military capabilities had been comprehensively destroyed:

‘I think the war is very complete, pretty much,’ he told CBS News. But in a separate appearance with Republican lawmakers in Miami, he struck a notably less definitive tone: ‘We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.’ Two framings with materially different implications for when and how the conflict ends.

Then there is the question of regime change. The U.S. National Intelligence Council (the body that coordinates assessments across the American intelligence community) has reportedly found that a large-scale US-led assault on Iran was unlikely to topple the government, and that a fragmented opposition taking control in the aftermath was equally unlikely. That assessment cuts directly against the strategic logic that has been used to justify the scale and duration of US strikes.

And in the most concrete example of the administration's communications breaking down under pressure, Energy Secretary Chris Wright posted on social media that the U.S. Navy had already escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, apparently trying to signal that freedom of navigation was being restored. The White House was forced to issue a correction denying this within hours. 

Oil prices briefly dropped on Wright's post, then stabilised. The episode illustrated, in miniature, the broader credibility problem the administration faces. Markets are struggling to know what to believe.

What might this mean for Bitcoin?

Bitcoin's response to all of the above has been, so far, composure. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $568 million in net inflows in the most recent week, following $787 million the week prior, the first back-to-back weekly gains in five months. Institutional holders are not fleeing, and if anything, some appear to be treating the uncertainty as background noise rather than a reason to sell.

That resilience reflects Bitcoin's structural transformation over the past two years. Once considered a chaotic, sentiment-driven asset prone to violent moves in response to macro shocks, BTC has been gradually anchored to the U.S. financial system through spot ETFs, pension fund exposure, and mainstream institutional adoption.

But the conditions that could break that composure are assembling. Goldman Sachs has warned oil could hit $150 a barrel if the Hormuz disruption persists. Iran is now threatening $200. If either scenario materialises and stays elevated long enough to feed back into US inflation and interest rate expectations, the liquidity environment that has supported BTC's institutional bid would come under pressure.

The next two to three weeks are likely to be decisive, both for the conflict and for Bitcoin's claim to have found a new kind of stability. 

Trump's timeline says the war ends by late March. 

His officials say strikes continue for at least that long. 

Iran says the pressure is only beginning. 

And Bitcoin, for now, is reserving judgment.

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