Key Points:
- Bitcoin hit a three-week high due to US-Iran ceasefire optimism.
- The ceasefire brought relief to markets, causing stocks to surge and oil prices to drop.
- Bitcoin’s rise liquidated over $250 million in short positions.
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw significant inflows, suggesting early market stabilization.
Bitcoin reached a three-week high as global markets became more optimistic following a ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran. The largest cryptocurrency saw a jump of up to 5%, hitting $72,841 in New York trading. This was its highest level since March 18, before it gave back some of those gains. Smaller digital currencies also made big moves, with Ether increasing by as much as 7.5% to $2,273.
Stock markets surged, and the price of US crude oil (West Texas Intermediate) dropped below $95. This brought it close to its biggest price fall in six years after US President Donald Trump paused the US bombing of Iran on Tuesday. Bitcoin initially rallied along with other riskier assets as investors felt more at ease with the temporary calming of the Middle East conflict. This raised hopes that the vital oil shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz, would reopen.
“If the ceasefire doesn’t hold, we will likely slide to $66,000,” said Matt Mena, a crypto research strategist at 21shares. Markets have been unstable since the war started on February 28. Investors worried that a serious disruption to oil flows would cause inflation and harm economic growth. Bitcoin has stayed mostly between $60,000 and $75,000 since the conflict began. The cryptocurrency is still down more than 40% from its October record high of over $126,000.
Bitcoin’s price jump caught traders who were betting on it to fall. A move near the $72,000 level is “pushing into a huge group of short-selling orders,” said Adam Saville-Brown, head of commercial at Tesseract Group. He added that if the price goes above $73,500, it could trigger a chain reaction that pushes Bitcoin closer to $80,000.
More than $250 million in short positions (bets that the price would fall) were closed out in the last day, according to CoinGlass data. This data also showed that more short positions were closed as Bitcoin’s price continued to rise. Actual buying and selling activity remains low, according to a report from blockchain data firm Glassnode. The report noted that “until real demand picks up, price rallies will likely feel fragile, with limited lasting impact.”
US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) received $471.3 million in new money on Monday. This built on the $22.3 million they got last week, a big change from the nearly $300 million that left the week before. March saw about $1.3 billion in new money flowing into these ETFs, which suggests things are stabilizing after four straight months of money leaving, starting in November 2025. “If money continues to flow in, it would provide a stronger base for the market,” the firm said. “For now, this looks more like an early stabilization than a full return of big investor demand.”
