Bitcoin, ether steady, gold slides as US-Iran tensions escalate again

Bitcoin held above $62,000 on Thursday while the assets that are supposed to absorb a war premium moved in opposite directions.

Brent crude climbed 1% to $78.80 a barrel, a third consecutive session of gains, after the U.S. military completed another round of strikes against Iran and both sides raised the prospect of closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Gold extended its slide to a fourth day at around $4,060 an ounce. Government bonds in Japan, Australia and New Zealand fell, extending Wednesday's global selloff, with two-year Treasury yields pushing toward their 2026 high.

Bitcoin traded at $62,009, down 1.2% over 24 hours and up 1.6% on the week. Ether was at $1,730, also off 1.2% on the day but up 5.7% over seven sessions. Solana was the laggard at $77.25, shedding 1.8% and 1.7% on the week. XRP slipped 0.7% to $1.09, TRON added 4% over seven days, and hyperliquid's HYPE gained 5.9% on the week despite a 1.2% daily dip.

The escalation reignited inflation concerns and pulled forward rate expectations.

Money markets on Wednesday moved their bet on the next Fed increase to October from December, a shift that lands on a market already carrying elevated valuations after this year's rally in artificial intelligence shares. Higher rates are what dragged gold lower, since a non-yielding metal loses appeal when cash pays more.

The same logic should be crushing bitcoin, but isn't. An oil shock, a bond selloff, and a hawkish repricing of the Fed produced a 1.2% daily move in an asset that used to shed 5% on a single Hormuz headline. The pattern has held across every leg of this conflict since February, with each successive escalation extracting a smaller reaction than the one before it.

What that leaves is a market that has stopped pricing Middle East risk as a crypto-specific event and started pricing it as a rates event, which is why bitcoin is tracking the front end of the curve more closely than it is tracking crude.

Sentiment supports the view. The Fear and Greed index has climbed to 27, pulling out of the extreme fear zone it occupied for 40 straight days. That is an exit from panic rather than a move into conviction, and the gauge has not sustained a print above 50 since November.