Within minutes of the first U.S.-Israeli missiles striking Tehran on Saturday morning, a different kind of exodus was already underway.
Crypto outflows from Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, surged 700%, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The spike was capital flight, executed in real time, by Iranians racing to move money out of a country suddenly under full-scale military bombardment.
Nobitex processed $7.2 billion in crypto transactions in 2025 and serves more than 11 million users, Elliptic said. It allows Iranians to convert rials into crypto and withdraw to external wallets which is a direct pipeline around the country’s crippled banking system and the web of international sanctions choking it.
Elliptic’s initial tracing of the weekend’s outflows shows funds flowing to overseas exchanges that have historically received significant Iranian inflows, suggesting the crypto is being moved out.
Elliptic flagged similar spikes earlier this year: a massive outflow on January 9 coincided with widespread anti-regime protests and a government-imposed internet blackout. Even during that blackout, some outflows continued, raising questions about who retains access to Nobitex’s holdings when the platform’s website goes dark.
Two additional surges aligned with announcements of fresh U.S. sanctions on Iranian actors. Each time, crypto served as the escape hatch.
“The outflows potentially represent capital flight from Iran that bypasses the traditional banking system,” said Dr. Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s co-founder.
Bitcoin’s weekend rollercoaster
The strikes — codenamed Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Epic Fury by the Pentagon — hit at 9:45 a.m. Tehran time on Saturday, targeting nuclear facilities, missile sites, and the Pasteur district in the capital where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei resided.
Iran confirmed Khamenei’s death hours later, along with other top officials.
Crypto markets reacted instantly. Bitcoin plunged from roughly $67,000 to below $64,000, shedding nearly 5% in minutes. The total crypto market capitalization dropped $128 billion as forced liquidations cascaded across exchanges.
Then came the snapback. The news of following events briefly pushed Bitcoin above $68,000, as traders speculated the regime’s decapitation might shorten the conflict. But the rally fizzled as Iranian retaliation — missiles and drones launched at Israel, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and U.S. bases across the region — made clear this was no contained event.
By Sunday afternoon, Bitcoin had settled around $65,300. At time of writing, Bitcoin is flirting with $70,000.
“The positive performance of the crypto market today can be explained primarily by a significantly more restrained reaction than anticipated,” Thomas Probst, a research analyst at Kaiko, wrote to Bitcoin Magazine.
He noted that when U.S. equities opened slightly positive on Monday, it reinforced the upward bias, with Bitcoin approaching $70,000 and major altcoins posting gains of 6–10%.
Open interest also climbed on February 28, showing that traders were adding new positions rather than reducing exposure ahead of the event. According to Axis, this behavior indicates that the market had largely priced in the geopolitical developments and was no longer viewing them as a major threat.
Still, the options market tells a more cautious story. On Deribit, $1.9 billion in Bitcoin put options were stacked at the $60,000 strike price over the weekend — heavy demand for downside protection that suggests sophisticated traders are hedging for worse to come.
Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, said bitcoin’s reaction to periods like this challenges the idea that it trades only as a risk-on tech proxy and instead reflects growing recognition of its role in times of counterparty risk.
“Much like we saw during the banking crisis of 2023, when the market runs to bitcoin in chaos, it gives a glimpse into more people understanding bitcoin’s value in a chaotic world full of counterparty risk,” Lamarre wrote to Bitcoin Magazine.
A conflict beyond crypto
The conflict’s economic ripple effects extend well beyond crypto. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that no vessels would be permitted to cross the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passes.
Oil futures surged at Monday’s open. Goldman Sachs has projected oil could hit $100 per barrel if the conflict persists for the four to five weeks that President Trump suggested in remarks over the weekend.
For Bitcoin, the Iran crisis underscores a fundamental tension.
Crypto was built to operate outside state control — and Nobitex’s 700% outflow spike proves it can. But that same utility makes it a front line in the shadow financial war between Western sanctions regimes and adversary states.
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