Bitcoin outperforms equities in risk-off session as Iran conflict enters third day

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Bitcoin outperforms equities in risk-off session as Iran conflict enters third day

Bitcoin rebounded to $66,500 after weekend strikes on Iran triggered $300 million in liquidations. Oil jumped, equities slid and select DeFi tokens outperformed.

By Oliver Knight, Omkar Godbole|Edited by Sheldon Reback

Mar 2, 2026, 11:30 a.m.

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Map of Iran (Tudoran Andrei/Shutterstock)

What to know:

• BTC traded near $66,500 after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran killed the country’s supreme leader, sparking around $300 million in long liquidations and a return to mid-range prices.
• Safe-haven demand lifted gold and silver, and oil rose to multi-month highs as equities sold off. BTC showed resilience vs S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 index futures.
• Altcoins largely mirrored BTC, with MORPHO, JUP, AAVE and LDO in the green while WLFI fell further.

Bitcoin BTC$66,343.52 is trading near $66,500 after adding 1.1% since midnight UTC and more than 5% from the weekend low of $63,000.

The crypto market is back in the middle of a trading range that has persisted since the start of February, with a volatile past week testing $70,000 to the upside and $62,500 to the downside.

Weekend price action was driven by the military strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, triggering retaliatory attacks and raising concerns about potential disruption to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

According to trading firm QCP, the strike sparked roughly $300 million in long liquidations — but the scale of forced selling was relatively contained, suggesting markets were already positioned for a volatile weekend.

The escalation pushed investors toward traditional havens, sending gold and silver to their highest levels in more than a month. Oil surged 13% to $82 a barrel, the highest price since July 2024.

U.S. equity index futures fell, with the S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 down 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively, since midnight UTC.

The crypto market showed resilience, with most of the losses occurring on Saturday when U.S. markets were closed.

Derivatives positioning

• The fallout from the Iran war has been more contained than might have been expected. While cumulative crypto futures open interest has dropped 2% to $93.78 billion, it remains above the recent low of $92.40 billion.
• Over $300 million in leveraged bets have been liquidated by centralized exchanges in 24 hours, with bullish bets accounting for most of the tally.
• Annualized perpetual funding rates for major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, are little changed to negative, indicating a slightly bearish bias.
• Still, the market isn't showing signs of panic, as evidenced from the bitcoin 30-day annualized implied volatility index, BVIV. It remains steady at around 58.8%, well within the price range seen last week. The same is true for the ether volatility index.
• On Deribit, short-term bitcoin puts traded at an 8%-10% volatility premium to calls, a sign of heightened downside worries. The $60,000 put, or bearish bet, remains the most popular on the exchange.
• Block flows featured demand for bitcoin put spreads.

Token talk

• The altcoin market largely tracked bitcoin over the weekend, but one of the fastest to recover was lending token MORPHO, which continued its impressive two-week streak with a 5% jump over the past 24 hours having risen by 2.6% since midnight UTC.
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens JUP, AAVE and LDO are all in the black as speculative appetite remains relatively strong despite a global shift to haven investments.
• Hyperliquid's HYPE token surged by more than 29% on Saturday to snap February's downtrend. While it lost 3.8% on Monday, losing 3.8% it remains above the crucial $30 level of support.
• WLFI$0.1053, the DeFi token linked to U.S. President Donald Trump's family, exentended declines, falling 2.5% of its value since midnight. It is now down by more than 44% since mid-January following a series of lower highs and lower lows.
• CoinDesk's DeFi Select (DFX) Index is the only benchmark that is positive over the past 24 hours. The worst performing was the CoinDesk Computing Select Index (CPUS) and the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Capped Index (SCPXC), down by 1.87% and 1.71%, respectively.

Crypto Markets TodayDerivatives

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U.S. equity futures fall in pre-market trading as oil, gold retreat from highs

By James Van Straten|Edited by Sheldon Reback

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Oil and gold pulled back after surging on the breakout of hostilities in Iran, while equities and crypto stocks face pressure.

What to know:

• WTI crude briefly hit $75 before easing, gold climbed above $5,400 to near record levels and then retreated, and volatility gauges VIX and MOVE jumped by more than 10%.
• U.S. equity index futures declined, with the Nasdaq 100-tracking QQQ exchange-traded fund losing 1.5%
• Bitcoin held above $66,000 in a divergence from its software-stock correlation, even as crypto-related equities traded lower.

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