- The crypto community is adapting to the war in Iran.
- The industry has cancelled events and brace for oil price shocks.
- But it is also growing.
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Hi. Eric here.
Crypto is adapting to the grim reality of the escalating war in the Middle East.
Some of those changes were expected, such as the annual Token2049 event in Dubai being postponed or the TON Network cancelling its Gateway Dubai event.
People obviously started to think long and hard about the pros and cons of risking their personal safety to attend industry events in the beleaguered region.
Other changes may have come as a surprise.
Take Bitcoin.
The top cryptocurrency has surged almost 10% in the two weeks since joint US and Israeli airstrikes took out Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran, on February 28 and triggered the region-spanning conflict.
That’s surprising. In previous conflicts, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the $1.4 billion asset lost value.
This could simply, as Laurens Fraussen, a research analyst with crypto data firm Kaiko, told Liam Kelly, be due to “exhaustion from all the geopolitical tensions.”
Yet, in a vote of confidence, Bitcoin traders are cautiously starting to price in a rally to $80,000 by the end of June on options-trading platforms.
To be sure, there is still a lot that could go wrong.
For instance, as Mathew Di Salvo reported this week, Iran warned that the price of oil could double to $200 per barrel if the US and Israel kept attacking the nation. If that happens, energy prices will spike, discouraging central banks around the world from cutting interest rates.
High interest rates are usually bad for Bitcoin because they restrict the liquidity the asset needs to rally. The chances that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates have dropped from just over 30% last Friday to 25% today, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
But what may surprise some of the crypto industry’s staunchest critics is that it’s still racking up wins despite the gloomy outlook.
This week, BlackRock gave Ethereum another vote of confidence by launching an exchange-traded fund that allows investors to capture staking rewards.
In another win for the industry, Ripple reportedly saw its valuation surge by 25% to $50 billion after the firm launched a $750 million share buyback programme.
We have also seen the war create trading opportunities in decentralised crypto exchanges. On Hyperliquid, traders have rushed in to trade tokenised oil perpetuals and metals to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The world looks like a frightening place now, but I personally find some solace in the fact that people keep building.
Despite the horrors we see on the news, crypto keeps innovating.
Democrats attack Trump on crypto. Will it be enough to win the midterms?
With all the woes of the Iran conflict, it can be hard to focus on the upcoming US elections this year. Yet, Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats haven’t.
Instead, they are increasingly using President Donald Trump’s ties to the crypto industry to attack him and other Republicans. But will it be a successful strategy? Mat and I found out.
Why Ripple’s rosy $50bn valuation raises more questions than answers
XRP may be down more than 60%, but Ripple’s financials look more promising than ever. Yet, as Liam pointed out in his reporting this week, the new $50 billion valuation raises questions about the fintech firm’s financial performance. Check out his report to find out why.
Sky slashes buybacks 87% to boost stablecoin reserves ahead of ‘massive oil shock’
Sky, one of the largest DeFi protocols, has dramatically reduced its buyback programme in an effort to bolster its stablecoin’s reserves. Its founder says the war in Iran is one of the reasons, Aleks Gilbert reports.
Post of the Week
Binance filed a defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday over the newspaper’s reporting in February that Binance fired employees after they uncovered $1.7 billion in crypto tied to sanctioned entities had flowed through the platform.
A spokesperson for the Wall Street Journal told DL News: “We stand by our reporting.“
We have initiated legal action against @WSJ for publishing a false and defamatory report, with the goal of setting the record straight.
— Eleanor Hughes (@eleanorshughes1) March 11, 2026
This lawsuit is a necessary measure to protect our organization from misinformation, hold WSJ accountable for compromising journalistic… pic.twitter.com/ZwQxjKguzy
