In the late night of July 13 to 14, 2026, the U.S. military launched attacks on Iran for the third consecutive night, and Trump simply referred to everything happening as a "military conflict." Almost simultaneously, the U.S. announced that starting from 04:00 Beijing time on July 15, it would block all of Iran's ports, but with a statement that retained an exemption for "neutral vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz to non-Iranian destinations." Meanwhile, Trump's proposal of a 20% "security passage fee" directly packaged this global energy artery as a cash flow channel that could be discounted by fee rates—Hormuz was no longer just a geopolitical chokepoint but attempted to be financialized as a toll gate. For the market, this was not a technical sanction, but a rewriting of the global energy supply curve and inflation expectations: the risk premium on oil prices was forcefully raised, the inflation compensation premium widened accordingly, and interest rates, exchange rates, and equity market valuations began to be repriced around a new safety discount, with high-beta crypto assets naturally being classified as needing additional risk discounts. During this round of military strikes, port blockades, and billing disputes, HyperliquidNews monitored that over $3.33 billion in positions were liquidated on the tradexyz platform. As a highly leveraged crypto derivatives platform, this single-source data alone illustrates that under the shadow of Hormuz billing, geopolitical volatility had already cut into the weakest leveraged crypto positions, with high-frequency funds feeling the cost of risk premium adjustments earlier than traditional assets.
20% Passage Fee at Hormuz: Oil Prices and Inflation Expectations Ignited
When Trump boldly placed the "protection fee" at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, the global energy chain was effectively forced to adopt a 20% toll. The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and is crucial for global energy transportation; now all oil tankers and merchant vessels passing through this area were included in the game of this "security passage fee." Even though U.S. Secretary of State Rubio emphasized last month that charging for this key international waterway was "fundamentally unfeasible," Trump still chose to raise the fee proposal amidst escalating military conflict and port blockades, turning a channel that originally belonged to global public goods into a priced and even speculatable gateway. The fee itself is a tax on the cost of every barrel of oil and every voyage, compounded by the uncertainty of the war timetable that Trump acknowledged had "far exceeded four to six weeks," naturally leading the market to incorporate this additional cost into oil prices and inflation expectation models.
Once inflation expectations are ignited by this "20% entrance fee," funds will not only focus on spot oil prices but will quickly reassess the path of nominal interest rates for the coming years: rising risk compensation and an upward trend in long-term discount rates mean that all assets priced based on "future growth stories" must face the reality of overall downward adjustments in cash flow discount results. For crypto assets, this repricing is a double squeeze: on the one hand, rising energy costs compress profit margins for miners and on-chain infrastructure, weakening the capacity to support high-risk, high-leverage positions; on the other hand, the narrative tug-of-war between BTC as "digital gold" and high β risk assets will be amplified—when inflation expectations rise, hedge funds will try to allocate it as an anti-inflation asset, while rising interest rate expectations will lead traditional institutions to regard it as a high-volatility asset that requires increased discount rates. With the billing game in Hormuz still unclear and the Iranian foreign minister only giving a vague signal of "principally accepting fees but needing fairness," both the upward range of oil prices and inflation expectations have been widened, making the correlation coefficient of BTC/ETH relative to crude oil and interest rate expectations a key variable in determining its fluctuation range in the near future.
Dual-Edged Sword of Port Blockades and Neutral Passage Exemptions
Starting from 04:00 Beijing time on July 15, all ports in Iran were blocked, while the statement emphasized not obstructing "neutral vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz to non-Iranian destinations," essentially striking precisely at Iran's export end while deliberately leaving a "systematic" passage gap for global buyers. For physical oil flows, this means Iranian barrels are locked in ports, while non-Iranian oil can theoretically still flow through the strait; but for the financial market, once Hormuz is written into wartime reports, traders will not price based on the "declaration version of unimpeded" but will raise risk premiums based on the worst-case scenario. This combination of "port blockade + strait exemption" misaligns physical flow constraints and expected shocks: the spot end experiences structural shortages, while the futures end accumulates scenario hypotheses, amplifying price spreads and volatility, making oil price curves more susceptible to dramatic fluctuations driven by emotions.
On this misalignment, U.S. forces have implemented strikes on Iran for three consecutive nights, while Trump acknowledges that the war's duration has exceeded the initially set four to six-week timeline, refusing to provide an end date and only stating, "Iran hopes to reach an agreement." Without a clear ceasefire deadline but maintaining a negotiation window, oil prices and inflation expectations are caught between the scenarios of "long-term tug-of-war" and "negotiations that could shift at any time," leading global funds to instinctively first shorten duration and then seek refuge: short-term flows back into dollars and U.S. Treasuries, treating the dollar as a buffer against geopolitical uncertainty, while clamping down on risk budgets for high-volatility assets, including BTC and ETH. For on-chain funds, this environment resembles a "liquidity defense battle"—increasing holdings in dollar-denominated assets, lowering leverage, and compressing high-beta positions until clearer variables emerge regarding whether the port blockade can evolve into a genuine shipping disruption and whether U.S.-Iran negotiations will materialize.
$3.3 Billion Liquidation: High-Leverage Crypto Longs and Shorts Cleared
At the same time when funds were withdrawing from high-volatility assets back into dollars and shortening duration, HyperliquidNews monitored that over $3.33 billion in positions were liquidated on the tradexyz platform, with both longs and shorts swept into a "machine takeover" chain exit. The briefing did not provide a direct causal link between this liquidation and the U.S.-Iran conflict, only confirming that both occurred in parallel; however, such a substantial forced liquidation constitutes a collective judgment on the accumulated leverage in the previous crypto market: in a window of dramatic fluctuations in geopolitical and macro variables, high-leverage positions were already pre-judged in risk engines and margin formulas without waiting for fundamental conclusions.
More pointedly, this liquidation of over $3.33 billion was almost concentrated on a single platform, tradexyz. For the entire crypto derivatives chain, such a "single point liquidation" exposes the structural fragility of long-tail platforms in risk management, depth, and hedging channels—when price signals are amplified and liquidity pools thin, a single platform's risk control adjustments are enough to trigger a chain of forced liquidations, raising the volatility premium and risk aversion across the entire market. Even if this liquidation currently only has a single-source disclosure and has not been multi-sourced verified, it is already significant enough to become an emotional anchor: traders will vote with their feet, treating this event as a reverse lesson on "who will bear the leverage" under geopolitical shocks, reevaluating platform risks and the boundaries of leverage usage.
Rearrangement of Risk Premiums for BTC, ETH, and Dollar Assets
During the window period of U.S. military strikes on Iran, port blockades, and disputes over the "Hormuz passage fee," the first reaction from global assets is often a simple and brutal "de-leveraging." Historical experience shows that crypto assets typically display high β in the face of such geopolitical shocks: BTC and ETH tend to follow U.S. stocks, especially high-growth sectors, when emotions contract sharply, prioritized as liquidity escape routes rather than safe havens. This time, the liquidation event of over $3.33 billion on tradexyz, although lacking a direct causal chain, occurred in parallel with the escalation of conflicts, sufficiently reinforcing the market stereotype that "crypto = high-leverage risk assets," leading risk premiums for BTC and ETH to be raised in the short term—investors require higher returns to continue holding, thus amplifying the price's elasticity to bad news.
However, if the port blockade and the negotiations over the "20% security passage fee" remain unresolved for the long term, the role of Hormuz as a global energy thoroughfare will begin to be repriced by the market, and the narratives of rising oil prices and inflation expectations will surface. This environment is precisely when the BTC "digital gold" story is most easily activated: amid concerns over fiat currency purchasing power being pressured, some long-term funds will attempt to switch BTC from a "high β tech stock substitute" back to an "inflation hedging asset," pushing its correlation with traditional risk assets to phase downward. Conversely, the dollar itself and dollar-linked on-chain assets are more likely to be viewed as direct hedging tools in the early stages of the conflict, with risk-averse funds first pulling their chips back into dollars, then selectively reestablishing positions in high-volatility assets like BTC and ETH; this back-and-forth rebalancing process between dollar assets and crypto assets will reshape the risk premium curve and trading range for BTC and ETH through liquidity thickness, derivatives pricing, and term structure.
From Protection Fees to Risk Rate: Where to Focus Next
Moving forward, crypto traders need to focus not on the emotional fluctuations of "fighting or negotiating" but rather on whether the Hormuz toll can materialize and what range the final fee rate will land in. Trump's 20% "security passage fee," the Iranian foreign minister's mention of "fair fees," along with Rubio's previous insistence that charging was "fundamentally unfeasible," indicate that both the fee itself and the rate level remain far from being solidified. This divergence will directly determine the magnitude and duration of the elevation in the oil price curve, thereby anchoring energy costs and inflation expectations for the upcoming quarters, which is precisely a macro input that BTC and ETH must internalize when discounting risk premiums. Equally important is whether a genuine negotiation window between the U.S. and Iran opens: Trump acknowledges that the war has exceeded the initially set timeframe but refuses to provide an end date, while claiming "it is still possible to reach an agreement," meaning that the geopolitical risk premium is in a state of potential bidirectional repricing. The weaker the negotiation signals, the higher the risk compensation demanded by the market for BTC and ETH, and the harder it becomes to recover the discount for risk assets overall. Until the conflict and billing game are resolved, the crypto market needs to focus simultaneously on several high-frequency indicators: the linkage between the oil price forward curve and actual interest rates, whether derivative leverage accumulates again after large liquidations like tradexyz, and the net flow of on-chain dollars between "entering for hedging" and "exiting for observation"; for it is the combination of these variables that will determine whether the next round of trends continues to tell the story of "safe-haven assets" or is forced to pay for the discounts on all crypto risk assets with higher risk rates.
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