The digital asset market has come under tremendous pressure after a series of US airstrikes on Iran on Saturday evening. Volatility spiked sharply, key coins entered deep correction, and traders recorded mass liquidations of longs. Over $1 billion evaporated from the market in a day — and this is only based on public data.
US President Donald Trump promptly reported on the strikes, stating their high effectiveness. Shortly after, he added fuel to the fire by hinting on Truth Social at the possibility of supporting regime change in Iran. These statements instantly resonated in global markets, causing sell-offs not only in crypto but also in traditional derivative markets.
According to Coinglass, over $1 billion was liquidated in the first 24 hours after the market incident, with the main low haul coming from long positions. Given that the aggregator's figures are based on open data from exchanges, the actual losses are likely much higher — especially considering large over-the-counter transactions and low-volume altcoins with low liquidity, which are often liquidated the fastest.
The Iranian parliament considered the idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz — a key artery of world oil, through which about a third of all black gold exports pass. Such threats have been voiced more than once, but real actions have not been taken. Nevertheless, traders are already pricing in future volatility for Brent and WTI.
Bitcoin, which previously held the psychological mark of $100k, could not withstand the pressure — prices fell below the support level for the first time in the last 45 days. This is despite a continued ninth consecutive session of inflows into spot BTC ETFs in the USA. However, weak volumes on Friday and an aggressive dump over the weekend raise the risk of a disruption of this trend already on Monday.
According to the GMCI30 index, which reflects the behavior of the top 30 coins by market capitalization, the market has declined by almost 10% over the past week. This is the best result among categories: small caps and AI tokens fell deeper — by 17% and 20% respectively. These figures highlight the vulnerability of even those assets that were recently considered 'blue chips' of crypto.
The market has returned to a phase of high sensitivity to geopolitics, and macroeconomics is once again dictating trends. Traders and investors — both whales and retail — are in a phase of reassessing risks. One careless tweet or strike could literally wipe out a leveraged portfolio. In such a situation, risk management comes to the forefront again.
$BTC
