I noticed an interesting pattern in how the war in the Strait of Hormuz has rewritten the logic of pricing global assets. It’s not just a geopolitical conflict — it’s a full-scale revaluation of the entire risk system.

Sharing my observation. When the conflict between the US, Iran, and Israel erupted on February 28, the traditional markets were still closed, but Bitcoin had already started falling from 68,000 to 64,000. This is no coincidence. The crypto market simply reacted faster to what was going to happen next.

About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. When tankers started taking hits and shipping came to a halt, the market faced not just higher oil prices, but unpredictability. Brent jumped above $80, but that’s just the surface. The real problem is deeper — when traders lose confidence in delivery timelines, the entire global logistics system shifts from a price question to a time question.

And what really broke the markets: insurance premiums for maritime shipping in the Persian Gulf increased by about 50% in just a few days. One tanker trip became $100,000–$200,000 more expensive. These costs won’t disappear — they will simply pass through the entire supply chain. Imported goods become more expensive, raw materials for manufacturing cost more, and the margins of international trade shrink. This is deferred inflation, which will manifest in the prices of household appliances and consumer goods over the coming months.

By the way, aviation also came to a halt. Dubai — one of the world’s main transit hubs — when airspace was closed there, tens of thousands of passengers found themselves stranded. This isn’t just about tickets back and forth. It’s about disrupted business meetings, delays in cross-border projects, increased costs for critical cargo deliveries. The infrastructure of globalization proved vulnerable to war.

The market immediately shifted into risk-off mode. When inflationary pressures increase, interest rates don’t fall — they rise. The yield curve moved upward. Investors started fleeing into bonds, gold, and inflation-sensitive commodities. Stocks, especially in the tech sector and growth companies, took the first hit because their future cash flows suddenly became cheaper with rising discount rates. Nasdaq fell, and that was a completely logical move.

And here’s what’s most interesting for the crypto community: blockchain assets are now fully embedded in this same pricing system. Three years ago, geopolitical conflicts mainly affected crypto emotionally. Now, the reaction of chain-based assets is almost identical to traditional finance.

I saw how, within 24 hours, there was a mass liquidation of derivatives contracts on the blockchain markets worth over a billion dollars. Open positions plummeted, funding rates turned negative. The logic is the same as on Nasdaq: when the market overestimates the trajectory of rates, the first assets to sell are those most dependent on liquidity. Bitcoin here isn’t a safe haven like gold — it’s a high-beta asset tied to dollar liquidity.

But crypto showed one cool feature: recovery happened much faster. As soon as stock futures stabilized and oil prices slowed their rise, Bitcoin immediately rebounded. A V-shaped recovery. The reason is simple: in crypto, there are no trading time restrictions and no delays in clearing between markets. When a macro shock occurs, the blockchain completes the revaluation cycle faster than traditional markets.

Stablecoins also demonstrated what’s happening. The transaction volume of USDT and USDC on-chain surged because investors sold risky assets but didn’t leave the market entirely. Money remains in stablecoins, waiting for reallocation. Essentially, the market capitalization of stablecoins is a cash position on the chain.

Tokenized gold behaves quite interestingly. When traditional markets are closed on weekends, PAXG and XAUT continue trading with a premium. Their price movements align with the direction of the spot gold market after opening. This means blockchain assets have become a shadow pricing mechanism for traditional assets.

In this situation, China played the role of an anchor of certainty. When three global arteries — energy, shipping, aviation — are simultaneously under attack, the market looks not for the asset with the highest growth but for a structure that provides stability.

China owns the most comprehensive industrial system in the world. About 30% of the added value of global manufacturing is created there — nearly twice as much as in the US. This means that rising transportation tariffs don’t linearly destroy internal supply chains. Plus, the concentration of production: in renewable energy, consumer electronics, photovoltaic modules, China’s share often exceeds 60% of global output. When European routes are bypassed, this localized capacity ensures order stability.

In 2024, during the crisis in the Red Sea, the index of maritime transportation increased by over 120%, but delivery times for Chinese exports fluctuated much less than in other manufacturing centers. Lower volatility in supply chains itself is a premium in crisis conditions.

Hong Kong plays the role of an interface between traditional finance and blockchain here. It’s one of the few markets in Asia with a dollar clearing system, offshore yuan, direct links to Chinese assets, and dispute resolution based on common law. The average trading volume on the Hong Kong exchange hovers around 100 billion Hong Kong dollars. The number of participants in cross-border yuan payments exceeded 1,400, covering more than 100 countries.

When licensed virtual asset trading platforms and projects like tokenized bonds appeared in Hong Kong, a new structure formed: traditional assets legally enter the chain, and chain assets are cleared within the traditional legal system. During geopolitical conflicts, this ensures continuous price discovery across time zones. When Europe and the US are sleeping on weekends, Hong Kong continues trading. When delays occur in traditional settlement systems, on-chain markets keep working.

This conflict rewrote the understanding of what safety and liquidity are. The future asset pricing center must simultaneously have: an industrial base for production, a financial system to settle deals, and a market structure that ensures continuous price discovery. When the world assesses uncertainty, those who provide confidence become the new anchors.