Four days after the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, bitcoin ($BTC) has outperformed many major asset classes, including commodities which were supposed to shine in exactly this scenario.
Since Donald Trump authorized the opening airstrikes of Operation Epic Fury at 1:15 a.m. New York time on February 28, $BTC jumped 12.1% from $65,492 to $73,419 at the time of writing.
Crude oil, the only asset whose supply saw a demonstrably bullish wartime reduction, gained a less impressive 10.4%, from $67.29 to $74.31 per barrel.
Gold actually has abandoned 3% Since the start of the war Despite an initial increase in safe haven values.
Price comparison of $BTC (orange) and gold (blue) since 1:15 a.m. New York time on Saturday.
Silver has fully retraced a brief spike due to war fears and is now down 10.2% after a roller coaster ride alongside gold and other precious metals.
Easy to beat, the S&P 500 index stagnated at -0.1%.
A weekend of relative strength in the middle of a bad year
Nvidia, the artificial intelligence (AI) darling that once single-handedly moved markets and had signed assurances from the Pentagon that OpenAI would continue to generate strong demand for its chips, managed to rebound a modest 2.8%.
Even adjusting that 2.8% by 3.1x to account for the larger size than Nvidia.$BTC market capitalization is always underperformed the world’s largest crypto by 340 basis points.
The disappointment of precious metals holders is obvious. As the U.S. military made obvious moves across the Atlantic to the Gulf states last week, gold and silver gradually rose, textbook-style – then spent the next three days bleeding as the dollar strengthened and inflation fears supplanted geopolitical hedges.
While $BTC Investors, owners of non-digital hard money, gained over the past week and saw an initial pop turn into a net loss.
Of course, the figures above date from the start of the war. The figures since the beginning of the year are distinct.
Over this longer period, $BTC lost 16% while gold gained 18%. As usual, there are two sides to every story.
A weekend even more efficient than oil
Even if the outperformance of $BTC Raising eyebrows, crude oil’s gains make intuitive sense. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint near Iran through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes daily.
Tanker traffic crossing the Strait has fallen by approximately 81% since the start of the war, as unfortunately war risk coverage was withdrawn and shippers avoided the Strait out of legitimate fear for human life.
Tanker rates in the region have reached unprecedented highs. Brent initially rose 13% to $82 before stabilizing a little lower. Analysts at Barclays have warned of a hit of $100 a barrel if the blockade is maintained, although the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus has said so. 206,000 barrels per day of additional production to alleviate the supply crisis.
Always, $BTC Outperformed oil in the biggest war of the year.
Read more: GRAPHIC: Bitcoin has lost all its gains since Trump’s election
AI agrees: $BTC it’s business
It is important to note that a recent study highlighted a new macroeconomic tailwind for $BTC this could boost demand in 2026.
The researchers published the results of 9,072 experiments performed on 36 frontier AI models and found that AI agents chose $BTC 48% of the time when selecting an optimal monetary asset.
For store of value use cases in particular, 79% chose $BTC. Claude Opus 4.5 from Anthropic, one of the most used models in the world, chose $BTC 91% of the time.
Conventional wisdom holds that war favors gold, oil and the dollar. Four days of live data says otherwise. $BTC absorbed the initial shock, recovered faster than many traditional safe havens and now tops rankings of assets worth trillions of dollars since the early hours of Saturday morning.
Whether the Strait of Hormuz reopens next week or next year, this was the week $BTC has become an interesting player in terms of crisis assets.
