Weekly digest: the Iranian conflict is reshaping markets — bitcoin holds firm, AI loses energy sources

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The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 became the main event of the week — and the main stress test for markets. According to QCP Capital, bitcoin and Ethereum briefly crashed to $63,000 and $1,910 respectively, while forced liquidations of long positions amounted to around $300 million. The market reacted more calmly than might have been expected: many participants had already reduced their positions after sensing tension throughout the previous week. QCP Capital analysts draw a parallel with the June 2025 precedent — back then bitcoin lost the $100,000 level at the moment of the first strikes, and a few weeks later reached a high of $123,000.

1-week chart of $BTC/USD and 200EMA. Source: Bitstamp

The conflict sent South Korea’s KOSPI down 11% — Samsung Electronics lost more than 10%, SK Hynix around 8%. The Strait of Hormuz ended up closed, Brent rose above $90 per barrel, and European TTF gas jumped 50% to $55. Around 25% of all seaborne oil passes through that strait. The blow also hit digital infrastructure: Iranian drones attacked AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disabling EC2, S3, and DynamoDB services. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank reported temporary unavailability of its mobile app. The conflict literally exposed a systemic dependency: modern AI infrastructure is tied to energy, and energy is tied to geopolitics.

1-week chart of Brent/USD

Bitcoin as a barometer: from $63,000 to $74,000 and back

This week bitcoin completed a full cycle — from shock to hope and back to uncertainty. On March 4 it climbed to $74,075 — a gain of more than 24% from the February low. Analyst Plan C stated directly that the 2026 bottom is already behind us, and those waiting for prices in the $30,000–40,000 range miscalculated. Trader BitBull noted a remarkable rotation: over three days gold lost 3%, silver 11%, while bitcoin gained 14%, and the total capitalization of the digital asset market increased by $300 billion.

However, by March 8 the picture had changed. Bitcoin failed to hold key levels: over three days the price lost 7.6%. Analyst Rekt Capital points to a classic false breakout: bitcoin rose above the 200-week EMA with a wick but failed to close above it. The signal is troubling: 77% of companies holding bitcoin on their corporate balance sheets are now underwater on their purchases. MARA’s mining cost stands at $70,027 — and at current prices miners are operating near break-even. Michaël van de Poppe points out that the bitcoin-to-gold ratio by RSI remains at historically low levels, and for now analysts are naming $61,000 as the next target.

A fundamental debate continues around bitcoin’s long-term nature. Lyn Alden believes that over a two- to three-year horizon bitcoin will outperform gold: the Fear & Greed Index for digital assets recorded “Extreme Fear” at 18 out of 100, versus “Greed” at 72 out of 100 for gold. Samson Mow of Jan3 points to the Z-deviation of the $BTC/gold ratio at −1.24 — historically, drops below −2 were followed by significant upside. Ray Dalio takes the opposite view: “there is only one gold,” and bitcoin still maintains a high correlation with technology stocks and remains vulnerable in moments of market stress.

Institutional capital returns

The strongest argument in favor of a reversal came from capital flow data. After five weeks of outflows, crypto funds attracted more than $1 billion — around $787 million of that went into bitcoin products. On Monday, March 2 alone, spot bitcoin ETFs recorded inflows of $458.2 million — trading volume rose to $5.8 billion, the highest level since early February. Over three days from March 2 to March 4, bitcoin ETFs gathered around $1.1 billion — the leader was BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT): $306.6 million in one session.

Jan van Eck, CEO of VanEck, stated that bitcoin is approaching a bottom and can gradually recover throughout the year. JPMorgan analyst Mislav Matejka viewed the geopolitical escalation as an opportunity to build positions. Michael Saylor’s Strategy completed its 101st bitcoin purchase — 3,015 $BTC for $204.1 million at an average price of $67,700 per coin, below the portfolio’s average cost of $75,985. The company’s total holdings reached 720,737 $BTC worth approximately $54.8 billion.

AI and technological shifts: from Samsung factories to model collapse

The technology front this week was no less intense. Samsung Electronics unveiled a strategy to move all production capacity to AI by 2030. AI-Driven Factories are autonomous environments where agentic AI independently makes decisions in real time. Humanoid robots, digital twins of manufacturing processes, specialized quality-control agents — the company is building infrastructure where the human role shifts from operational execution to supervision. Competitors are not standing still: Boston Dynamics and Google are already launching production of humanoid robots for Hyundai factories, with planned output of 30,000 units per year by 2028.

Meanwhile, the battle for AI coding intensified: Anthropic’s Claude Code crossed $2.5 billion in annual revenue, overtaking Cursor, while employees of startup Valon canceled 90+ subscriptions and switched to agents completing tasks 10 times faster.

Vitalik Buterin stated that a single developer used AI to “vibe-code” the entire Ethereum 2030 roadmap in just a few weeks — and urged that the gains from AI be split equally between speed and safety. NYDIG analyst Greg Cipolaro warned that AI may either become a catalyst for monetary easing — in which case bitcoin benefits — or raise real yields and tighten conditions. A large study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute found that none of 36 tested language models preferred fiat currencies, while bitcoin emerged as the most favored monetary instrument in 48.3% of responses.

Regulatory front: Trump, the SEC, FATF, and sanctions

The regulatory climate this week was uneven — but overall tilted in crypto’s favor. Trump’s statement that the U.S. intends to “dominate the crypto market” pushed Coinbase shares up 14%, Strategy more than 10%, and miners Hut 8 and American Bitcoin Corp by 13.89% and 11.65% respectively. For the first time, the administration included cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy — Galaxy Digital researcher Alex Thorn called it a historic precedent. At the same time, the same document contains rhetoric about “cutting off financial exits” for criminal infrastructure — which could potentially extend to mixers and privacy coins.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ended proceedings against Justin Sun: Rainberry will pay $10 million, and all allegations related to the sale of unregistered securities through TRX and BTT tokens will be dropped without an admission of guilt. Three Democratic congressmen warned that the situation could “undermine investor confidence” in the regulator — given that Sun invested $75 million in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial project. At the same time, the FATF published a targeted report requiring governments to fully implement AML/CFT regimes for stablecoins — including freezing mechanisms and allowlists at the smart-contract level. Binance rejected accusations from a group of senators of evading Iranian sanctions, calling the investigation based on “knowingly false” materials — however, the Treasury Secretary and Attorney General have until March 13 to respond.

Cheburnet-2028: the myth was dismantled, the reality turned out harsher

A wave of publications about the supposedly inevitable isolation of Runet by 2028 swept across X and Telegram in just two days. At the center was a RAEC forecast from February 27, in which the cautious phrase “will most likely complete key stages” was turned in retellings into an accomplished fact. No official decision on creating an isolated network with a 2028 deadline exists in the public domain. Government Resolution No. 1667, interpreted by some as a “switch to cut the internet off from the world,” merely replaced a similar 2020 document — Roskomnadzor did not receive any new powers.

The real picture is still quite harsh — just in a different way. In February, Roskomnadzor for the first time applied массовое deletion of domains from the National Domain Name System: records for YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, BBC, and The Moscow Times disappeared. YouTube’s audience in Russia fell from 95 million to 65.9 million, while the number of blocked VPN services rose from 197 in 2024 to 469 by the end of February 2026 — a 70% increase in three months. Another 2.3 billion rubles was allocated to create an AI-based VPN traffic blocking system.

Presidential internet adviser German Klimenko added his own forecast to this backdrop: anonymity on the Russian internet will disappear by 2028 — not through bans, but through the technical inaccessibility of circumvention tools. There will be no legislative ban on VPNs; it will simply become so difficult to use them that ordinary users will give up trying. The distinction is fundamental: not isolation, but identification. Yet amid the week’s information noise, both narratives merged into a single image of a closed internet and reinforced one another.

The dark side of the week: trojans, vulnerabilities, and an arrest in Saint Martin

The week brought several alarming cybersecurity signals. Google discovered the Coruna exploit kit for iPhone — five full exploit chains and 23 vulnerabilities targeting MetaMask, Phantom, Exodus, and other crypto wallets. iVerify co-founder Rocky Cole called it “the first known case” in which state surveillance tools, allegedly developed in the U.S., ended up in the hands of criminal groups. In the MAX messenger, a surge of the “Mammoth” trojan was recorded, using compromised accounts to spread APK files through trust-based communities — residential chats, parent groups. Hash Telegraph’s editorial team confirmed a MAX vulnerability: photos from private chats can be opened via a direct link without authorization, and deleting the photo does not invalidate the URL.

The crime story of the week: John Daghita — the son of the owner of a contractor managing confiscated U.S. crypto assets — was arrested. The accused effectively exposed himself by publicly displaying Telegram screenshots of the movement of $23 million. ZachXBT estimated damages from Daghita’s actions at more than $90 million. The arrest was carried out by an elite French gendarmerie unit and the FBI on the island of Saint Martin.

Results and market sentiment

The week began with a geopolitical shock and ends in technical uncertainty. Bitcoin traveled from $63,000 to $74,075 and then returned to the $65,000–68,000 range — the market absorbed the Iranian crisis without panic, but failed to maintain momentum. The key structural change is that institutional capital is returning to bitcoin through ETFs during periods of geopolitical stress, rather than leaving it. This is a new reality: $1.1 billion over three sessions is not crowd mood — it is portfolio managers making decisions.

The regulatory climate in the U.S. is softening — but FATF is tightening the screws internationally. The debate over bitcoin’s nature — “safe haven” or risk asset — remains unresolved. Bitwise believes the era of classic altseasons is over: the market will reprice tokens with real economic value rather than lifting all boats at once. The macro backdrop remains tense — the Strait of Hormuz, trade tariffs, inflation — but not yet critical. Market mood: cautious optimism with high readiness for a fast correction at the first negative signal.

AI opinion

From the perspective of machine data analysis, the week exposed an intriguing paradox: the geopolitical shock that should have crushed risk assets instead accelerated capital flows into them. The historical pattern here is atypical — the classic Gulf crises of 1990 and 2003 were accompanied by sustained flights into the dollar and gold for weeks. This time, institutional capital via ETFs rotated into bitcoin by the third day of the conflict — a structurally new market reaction without direct historical analogues.

The energy dimension of the crisis deserves special attention. The closure of Hormuz hit precisely the industry that consumes energy faster than all others — AI infrastructure. A strait only 54 kilometers wide turned out to be a bottleneck not just for oil tankers, but for the entire chip production chain. How resilient is the concept of the “smart factory of the future” if its energy security depends on a single geographic corridor?

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