Crypto Surges as Oil Prices Retreat on Iran Breakthrough

The great breaking of correlations may be upon us. Oil is down, stocks are up, and crypto is surging — with Bitcoin at six-week highs and Ethereum up 10% today.

If you’re keeping up — the first oil tanker finally made it through the Strait of Hormuz — and the market immediately took that as a sign the panic trade may have gone too far.

After briefly spiking to nearly $120 a barrel on fears that Iran’s closure of the strait could choke off roughly 20% of global oil flows, Brent crude prices have since slipped back toward the low $100s. For the third week in a row, expert oil trader Stephen Schork joined us on Coinage today to note that one ship crossing does not mean the oil market is immediately back to normal.

“I guess it depends on your definition of what normal is, right? So no, I don’t think we’re at normal right now,” Schork told us. His argument is that traders looking only at Brent are missing the bigger story: the Atlantic basin still has oil, especially with Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases adding more barrels, but Asia is still badly short. That’s why he said the market to watch isn’t just Brent or WTI — it’s Dubai crude, which he said is still trading around $130 a barrel, or roughly a $30 premium to Brent when it normally trades at a discount.

That’s also why today’s setup is so interesting.

Even as markets took the reopening headlines as a reason to calm down, Schork argued that the real dislocation hasn’t actually been fixed yet. In his view, the first real sign that something material is changing for the better would be Brent decisively breaking below $99. From there, he laid out a path back toward what he called a more normal market in the low $90s — and, if things really move in the right direction, potentially down to $86, then eventually back into the $70 range where oil was trading before all this began.

“If we break that $99 level in Brent, that will be our first telltale that something material is changing, changing for the positive,” he said.

The caveat is timing. Even if the strait fully reopens and tensions ease, Schork warned it still takes time to get real flows moving again.

Bitcoin Acts Like This Might Be the Moment

As all of this played out, Bitcoin pushed to a six-week high. Impressively, crypto investment products notched inflows of more than $1 billion. That marked the third consecutive week of inflows, according to CoinShares data.

The bigger open question is whether Bitcoin is finally starting to reclaim a safe-haven narrative here — or whether the move is still being disproportionately carried by the same giant treasury buyers.

Strategy announced it scooped up $1.57 billion worth of Bitcoin, and Tom Lee’s BitMine added another 60,999 ETH (~$142 million) compared to its recent weekly average of about 45,000 to 50,000 ETH.

Fed Meeting Wednesday

Fresh off a federal judge blocking a DOJ subpoena against him, Fed Chair Jerome Powell may be free(r) to speak his mind Wednesday. Per NBC:

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge on the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., wrote in a court filing.

Boasberg continued: “On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

But, despite President Trump’s repeated aggression, that still may not mean interest rate cuts are coming any sooner. Not only have inflation fears picked up based on the Iran conflict — but Powell’s replacement, Kevin Warsh, is waiting in the wings to take over.

While no one expects any interest rate adjustments, it will be interesting to hear the Fed’s thinking around inflation and an increasingly worsening labor picture.

Crypto Project of the Year Final

As March Madness kicks off, we direct your attention to the only bracket that matters: the championship in Crypto Project of the Year is finally here. We are down to the final two crypto projects after starting with 16 nominated projects.

Now, you have to help us choose a winner: Canton vs. Ethereum.

Voting is now open and will stay open for a week. If you’re a Coinage NFT holder, now’s your time to weigh in. (If you’re not — join us in co-owning the fastest-growing media outlet in crypto.)

To celebrate, Coinage is linking up with GeniusPR and ACJR to co-host another media mixer on the sidelines of the Digital Asset Summit in NYC next week. If you’re in town, RSVP to hang!

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