The ceasefire agreement clears the macro fog, and the crypto market may present a good opportunity for bottom-fishing.

Byline: Max.S

In the past short 48 hours, global macro markets have gone through a dramatic emotional whiplash. As an unexpected ceasefire agreement was reached between Washington and Tehran, the geopolitical gloom hanging over global capital markets was quickly dispersed. In this sudden macro upheaval, the price action of traditional assets and crypto assets has diverged and been reshaped in a way that is especially valuable for study.

Spurred by this news, Bitcoin (BTC) rapidly jumped from around $69k to above $72k, even briefly breaking through the $73k psychological level in short-term trading.

By contrast, traditional crude oil markets saw a sharp selloff as the geo-premium was rapidly squeezed out. This starkly opposite pattern not only shattered the traditional finance clichés about “safe-haven” versus “risk” assets—it also pushed Bitcoin’s “real-time price discovery” capability in the global macro game to the forefront.

For professional finance practitioners and Crypto Native investors, the confirmation of this war’s end is not merely the landing of a news headline—it is more like a highly important cyclical coordinate. Behind this coordinate, we see an extremely contradictory industry reality: macro sentiment marginally improving at the same time that liquidity within the crypto industry is drying up to an extreme degree. This kind of extreme sense of tearing mirrors the ice age of 2019—an era that left countless industry participants desperate, yet ultimately incubated a historic bull run.

In the narrative context of traditional finance, assets are strictly divided into two categories: Risk-on (risk-seeking) and Risk-off (risk-avoiding). When war breaks out, money pours into gold, U.S. Treasuries, and the U.S. dollar as safe havens; when the war ends, funds flow back into the stock market and high-yield bonds. However, in this Washington–Tehran struggle cycle, Bitcoin has displayed a rare and highly resilient “dual nature.”

As XBTFX and Crypto.com noted in recent market analysis, in this geopolitical crisis Bitcoin has served as the perfect “real-time price discovery” tool. Crypto markets’ 7x24 nonstop trading mechanism makes them the first venue where global capital prices macro shocks.

In the initial stages of extreme conflict, Bitcoin’s price action closely tracked that of traditional safe-haven assets such as crude oil and gold. Due to its censorship resistance and decentralized nature that makes cross-border transfer easy, Bitcoin is often viewed by high-net-worth individuals and institutions as a “digital safe-haven channel” amid localized wars and geopolitical turmoil. At this stage, it is trading on a premium driven by worries about sovereign credit. What is truly striking, though, is how quickly it “changes its face” during the crisis-relief phase. When ceasefire rumors surfaced and crude oil prices plunged in response as supply-chain fears tied to the war were removed, Bitcoin did not experience the kind of selloff that traditional safe-haven assets faced. Instead, it surged explosively as global markets’ overall risk appetite returned (Risk-on).

This ability to seamlessly switch between “safe-haven assets” and “risk assets” comes from Bitcoin’s inherent dual-valuation model. In times of crisis, it is a tool to hedge geopolitical risk and currency (fiat) depreciation; when peace returns and abundant-liquidity expectations come back, it becomes an enhanced high-Beta version of Nasdaq tech stocks. This two-sided “source of profits wherever it turns” trait means that, to some extent, Bitcoin has already surpassed traditional gold—becoming the most sensitive and most efficient geopolitical barometer in the global capital battleground. It does not need to rely on complex settlement systems and warehousing costs; using code and consensus alone, it can reprice global risk sentiment at millisecond speed.

From a macro-game perspective, the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran is not random. It is the inevitable result of both sides reaching a certain Nash equilibrium after internal economic pressure and external political demands. For financial markets, this means the biggest uncertainty has been eliminated. No insider information, no suspense—neither side has a reason to continue bearing the enormous costs of war.

The confirmation of the war’s end has the most direct impact on the crypto market by removing the “black swan” expectations hanging over investors’ heads. Over the past period, concerns that the Middle East situation could spiral out of control and trigger a global energy crisis and a resurgence of inflation led to a shadow being cast over the Fed’s monetary-policy path. Major asset classes were generally in a defensive and tightening posture.

Now, the all-clear has been given. The logic of macro capital allocation will return to fundamentals and liquidity expectations. As for Bitcoin’s rebound, from a trading-strategy standpoint, there is no need at this stage to rush to predict the exact location of the top.

As a Wall Street saying goes: “Don’t try to predict the limit of the market—follow the extension of the trend.”

Where to take profit and where the rebound ends can be handled by watching as you go—dynamically adjusting your position by observing the depth of the order book and the turnover of key resistance levels. The real core contradiction has already shifted from macro geopolitical games to micro structural problems within the crypto industry.

If Bitcoin’s price rebound brings the market a hint of warmth, then when we turn our attention to the eco-structure inside the crypto industry, what we feel is bone-chilling cold. The industry fundamentals in 2026 right now look just like the “crypto winter” of 2019.

The current micro market shows two extremely extreme features: a cliff-like drop in secondary liquidity, and near-freezing levels of confidence in primary investment.

Let’s first look at the secondary market. Even though Bitcoin is holding at relatively high levels and even rebounding somewhat, aside from a very small number of mainstream coins, liquidity for the vast majority of altcoins has already dried up. After market makers went through the violent swings and regulatory pressure of the “two ten disasters,” they sharply reduced their risk exposure on their balance sheets, resulting in extremely poor order-book depth. Even moderately large sell orders can break through the defense line, and retail and institutional trading willingness has fallen to rock bottom. The entire secondary market now looks like a ripped scene of “Bitcoin feeding while everything else withers.”

The severity in the primary market is even worse. VC firms in the Web3 space are facing a double bind: severe pressure from LPs and difficulty raising funds. Seed-round financing that used to carry valuations of tens of millions of dollars has long since disappeared. Web3 companies are experiencing an unprecedented wave of layoffs—from bottom-layer public-chain development teams to top-layer DeFi and GameFi protocol teams—everyone is cutting headcount and reducing operating spend. Industry participants’ faith is being tested harshly. Large numbers of once-ambitious technical talents and market elites have left the Crypto circle and pivoted into what appear to be more certain areas today, such as AI or other traditional technology sectors.

This is a typical bottom-of-cycle characteristic: capital retreats, the bubble bursts, low-quality projects are cleared out, and industry participants are flushed. For those well versed in financial history, all of this will feel painfully familiar. In 2019, the market completed the final turnover of shares as the ICO bubble fully burst, Bitcoin endured a long period of painful sideways trading at the bottom, and large-scale exits by industry practitioners took place.

In financial markets, consensus is often something that gets harvested, while wealth class “upward jumps” often come from contrarian trades against extreme market sentiment. The famous line from Buffett—“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”—has extremely hard-core practical significance in today’s crypto market.

So why is this year the best time for secondary-market value picking and primary-market investing?

Looking at cycle odds and win rates, when a large number of industry participants have exited, primary-market valuations have been compressed to the extreme, and the secondary market is neglected with nobody asking, the “bubble premium” in assets has already been completely squeezed dry. In 2019, those institutions that were bearing the market’s cold scrutiny—dollar-cost averaging Bitcoin and Ethereum in the secondary market, while capturing early DeFi protocols (like Uniswap, Aave, etc.) in the primary market at extremely low valuations—ultimately became the biggest winners in the 2020–2021 bull market, earning up to 100x Alpha gains.

The current market environment provides a perfect opportunity to re-load:

Secondary-market Alpha screening: liquidity starvation is actually the best litmus test. Projects that, even without strong market-maker support, can still keep their core code updated, keep community activity from fading, and have a real revenue model—these are the core assets that will explode in the next cycle. At this time, collecting chips with extremely low time and capital costs means the downside risks have already been fully released by the prolonged downward drift beforehand.

Primary-market buyers’ market: because fundraising is hard, high-quality Web3 entrepreneurs no longer dare to name their price arbitrarily. Institutional investors have absolute bargaining power, and can obtain equity or token allocations several times greater than in a bull market using the same amount of capital. More importantly, teams that choose to build and keep going even under such brutal financing conditions have resilience and execution capability that far exceed the storytellers and opportunists in a bull market.

History won’t simply repeat itself, but it always keeps to a similar rhythm. The end of the macro geopolitical war provides a breeding ground for a global rebound in risk appetite; while the industry’s “2019-style” ice point provides an excellent pricing trough. The current crypto market is not short of value—it is short of patience to discover that value, and short of the courage to act in despair.

For professional capital managers, there is no need to overly worry about short-term macro disruptions or the height of a temporary rebound. Recognize the long-term logic brought by Bitcoin’s “dual nature,” face the industry reality of the current liquidity cliff directly, and take over the bloodied chips when the pessimists exit. Those “smart money” players who dare to plant seeds in 2026’s “2019-style winter” will, in the subsequent new round of a super bull market powered by the resonance between macro easing and technological innovation, reap the most bountiful fruits.