Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | jk

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel jointly launched military strikes against Iran. When the news broke, the major global financial markets were closed, leaving only the crypto market to bear an undue amount of pressure and diverging risk aversion expectations. Bitcoin plunged nearly 6% in 45 minutes, dropping from about $70,000, which it reached the previous week, to a recent low of $63,038, triggering about $515 million in liquidations of long positions and causing the overall crypto market value to evaporate by more than $128 billion. The crypto fear and greed index subsequently fell into the "extreme fear" zone.

Hayden Hughes, managing partner of Tokenize Capital, commented on the day of the strikes: “Bitcoin is the only major liquid asset that trades 24/7, so it absorbed all the selling pressure that should have been spread across stocks, bonds, and commodities. True price discovery will only occur when the U.S. stock market and Bitcoin ETF reopen on Monday.”

For long-term participants in the crypto market, the scene of geopolitical conflict is not unfamiliar.

In the past four years, the crypto market has undergone three significant geopolitical stress tests, each yielding different results. This article from Odaily Planet Daily will review the trends of Bitcoin during the three geopolitical events: the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israel-Gaza war, and the India-Pakistan conflict, and attempt to organize the evolving complex relationship between war and the crypto market in conjunction with the market performance and analyst predictions of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war.

Russia-Ukraine War (2022)

On February 24, 2022, Russia fully invaded Ukraine, causing Bitcoin to plummet about 8% within hours, dropping from around $37,000 to $34,413, and the entire crypto market value evaporated by around $160 billion within 24 hours. The stock market also collapsed, as investors rushed to escape risk assets.

However, just four days later, a dramatic reversal occurred in the market. Bitcoin experienced a single-day rebound of over 14%, marking the largest single-day gain in over a year. Within a month, the price had risen approximately 27% compared to the pre-invasion levels, once reaching $47,000.

This rebound, influenced by the war, showed a very clear upward trend in Bitcoin demand. Analysts attributed part of this rebound to Russians trying to use crypto assets to evade sanctions, as well as the demand from the people of both Russia and Ukraine to transfer their assets into cryptocurrency due to the impact on their national banking systems. During that brief window, Bitcoin indeed exhibited a kind of "anti-establishment currency" characteristic: in an extreme environment where both sovereign currencies and traditional banks were failing, people flocked to Bitcoin as a more stable and value-storing asset.

However, this property did not last; in the following months, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates dramatically, and the macro environment shifted sharply. By the time of the collapse from Terra to FTX, Bitcoin had declined to $16,000. The geopolitical premium triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war was drowned out by a larger cyclical bear market. Three months after the outbreak of the war (by the end of May 2022), Bitcoin was priced at about $29,000, netting a drop of about 20% compared to pre-war levels.

Israel-Gaza Geopolitical Conflict (2023)

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, triggering the ongoing Gaza geopolitical conflict. This time, the crypto market was almost unaffected.

On the day of the outbreak, Bitcoin's decline was only 0.3%, closing at around $27,844, showing surprising apathy in the face of a regional war causing tens of thousands of casualties. Four days after the conflict began, Bitcoin fell below $27,000, hitting a new low since September, and traders generally attributed this to the negative impact of the Middle Eastern conflict on investor sentiment. However, this was the entirety of the geopolitical conflict's impact on the market, which subsequently dissipated completely.

Fifty days into the conflict, Bitcoin's performance exceeded its initial price at the start of the war, with the narrative of war quickly being overshadowed by the expectation of ETF approvals and the upcoming halving cycle in the crypto market. In the following three months, Bitcoin soared from below $27,000 to a range of $44,000 to $49,000, driven primarily by the historic approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF by the U.S. SEC in January 2024. The Gaza conflict continued for over two years, during which Bitcoin reached a historic high of $126,173. In other words, as institutional investors and ETF funds entered en masse, Bitcoin's price logic became increasingly dominated by internal cycles rather than driven by external geopolitical events. Regional wars, even if they are intense, have become difficult to shake in an increasingly mature financial market.

India-Pakistan Conflict (2025)

On May 7, 2025, India launched "Operation Sindhul," conducting missile strikes on militant infrastructure inside Pakistan, marking the most intense direct military conflict between two nuclear-armed countries in decades.

Following the news, Bitcoin briefly fell to around $94,671, while Ethereum dropped to $1,774, but the decline was very short-lived. Four days later, both sides announced a ceasefire. The crypto market rebounded, with Bitcoin rising back above $103,000. The market then quickly returned to its normal trading rhythm, so little was the conflict felt that it was nearly impossible to find corresponding traces in the Bitcoin candlestick chart afterwards.

Iran: Where are we and where are we heading?

The outbreak of this U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict found Bitcoin at a historically weak moment.

Bitcoin has fallen nearly 50% from its historic high of $126,173 in October 2025, and the entire crypto market has been under pressure since late October 2025. In February 2026, Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of about $3.8 billion in a single month, marking the worst monthly performance since spot ETFs were listed, with cumulative net outflows reaching $4.5 billion year-to-date. At the same time, gold ETFs attracted approximately $16 billion in net inflows during the same period, with the outflow from "digital gold" to real gold becoming one of the most noticeable macro trades in early 2026.

On the day of the outbreak, U.S. President Trump confirmed that U.S. military operations against Iran had begun, causing the entire crypto market value to evaporate by about $128 billion within 24 hours, triggering over $515 million in liquidations.

As the second week of March approached, market sentiment improved significantly after U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bensent announced that the Trump administration was taking measures to suppress oil prices. By March 13, Bitcoin rose to around $73,800, nearing a one-month high, with a single-day increase of nearly 5%, marking the first trading day since the outbreak of the Iran war to record a Friday increase. On March 16, Bitcoin further rose to about $73,882, breaking above the 50-day moving average. This was the first breakthrough in two months, seen by analysts as an important turning point in the mid-term trend. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin has rebounded more than 17% from the low point at the outbreak of the war.

Similar to history, but with more variables

This trend is highly reminiscent of the previous conflicts' "script" — sharp drop, rebound, digestion. If the script is identical, then we should currently be at the stage of beginning to digest.

Looking back at the three conflicts of the past four years, one clear observation is that geopolitical events themselves have become increasingly difficult to leave a lasting mark on Bitcoin's price. The Russia-Ukraine war caused a substantial impact not due to the war itself, but because it triggered Western sanctions against Russia and elevated global inflation, compounded by two black swan events. The Gaza and India-Pakistan conflicts further demonstrated that regional military conflicts, no matter how intense, will cause the crypto market to return swiftly to its own narrative, as long as they do not significantly disturb energy supplies and global monetary policies.

Whether the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict constitutes an exception hinges solely on oil prices. The Strait of Hormuz carries about one-fifth of the world's oil flow; if it were genuinely blocked, inflation would reignite, and expectations for U.S. interest rate cuts would be completely dashed, leading to macro pressures on Bitcoin as a risk asset that would far exceed the panic selling at the start of the war. Conversely, if the conflict remains at its current intensity, oil prices retreat, and negotiations restart, then based on historical experience, the impact of this war on Bitcoin's price will gradually dissipate.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。