Bitcoin recovered above $70,000 on Thursday, even as fresh attacks on cargo vessels in the Gulf sent oil prices surging past $100 a barrel.

Three more tankers were struck during the early Asian trading session, rattling financial markets already contending with the escalating U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran. The development follows the International Energy Agency's proposal to release the largest oil reserve in its history, as Decrypt previously reported.

"The IEA releasing reserves is a band-aid," Jonathan Farnell, CEO of Freedx, told Decrypt. "As long as the conflict continues, the supply disruption premium isn't going anywhere."

The Strait of Hormuz—which carries roughly 20% of the world's daily oil supply—is functionally paralyzed, with major shippers rerouting around Africa, Farnell said. The disruption raises the risk of persistent inflation and delays expectations of monetary easing, tightening financial conditions across asset classes.

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $70,550, up 1.9% over the past 24 hours after recovering from a dip to $69,264 Thursday morning, according to CoinGecko data. West Texas Intermediate crude spiked to an intraday high of $95.91 per barrel, while Brent crude rose to $101.47.

Goldman Sachs analysts raised their fourth-quarter 2026 Brent and WTI crude oil price forecasts to $71 and $67 per barrel, respectively, from $66 and $62, Reuters reported.

Users on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, have assigned a 63.3% chance that oil’s next move will be a rally to $120, betting on extended uncertainty surrounding the Gulf countries. They remain evenly split on Bitcoin's outlook, placing a 50% chance either way on its next move taking it to $84,000 or $55,000.

The U.S. dollar index continues to hover just below $100 despite geopolitical uncertainty.

Despite the broader risk-off environment, Bitcoin has outperformed gold and the Nasdaq-100 index since the war began on February 28. The leading crypto is up over 8%, while the precious metal and the U.S. stock market index are down 2% and 0.5%, respectively.



While Bitcoin initially trades like a risk asset during periods of liquidity tightening, sustained geopolitical instability can reinforce structural demand for censorship-resistant financial assets, Rachel Lin, CEO of SynFutures, told Decrypt.

"The first-order effect is risk-off volatility, but the second-order effect can be renewed structural demand," Lin added.

With oil above $100, the prospect of a near-term Federal Reserve pivot appears increasingly remote, according to Farnell, keeping Bitcoin's path of least resistance sideways to down through the end of March.

There’s a 99.3% chance that the U.S. Federal Reserve keeps the interest rates unchanged at 3.50% to 3.75%, per CME’s FedWatch tool, underscoring Farnell’s outlook. Myriad users place just a 13% chance on the Fed cutting rates by more than 25bps before July.

The contrarian case, he added, is that prolonged conflict requires government debt issuance, which eventually expands liquidity and weakens the dollar—historically favorable conditions for Bitcoin, but a dynamic more likely to materialize in the second half of the year.

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