# The War Has Been Going On for Two Weeks, and BTC Has Outperformed Almost Every Asset

I've reviewed the data multiple times, and it feels almost absurd.

On February 28th, the U.S.-Israel air strikes on Iran occurred, and BTC crashed 8.5% that day, plunging to 64,000. Everyone was screaming it's over, war is here, risk assets will XX.

Two weeks later, today, BTC is around 71,500. Not only did it not collapse, it gained approximately 11%.

You read that right.

Outperformed gold.
Outperformed the S&P 500.
Outperformed the Nasdaq.
Outperformed Asian stock markets.

According to CNBC data: Since the war started, the S&P and gold have both fallen over 3%, and the Nasdaq fell over 2%.

Facing a real war, the king of risk assets has outperformed all traditional safe-haven assets. But the most absurd part isn't the result—it's the process.

Every time the war escalated, BTC was selling off. But every time it fell, the bottom was higher than the last time.

--February 28th, first round of strikes, fell to 64,000
--March 2nd, Iranian missile retaliation, fell to 66,000
--March 7th, continuous week of firefighting, fell to 68,000
--March 12th, oil tanker attacked, fell to 69,400
--Yesterday, Kharg Island bombed, fell to 70,596

Five escalations, five selloffs, five progressively higher bottoms.

I think the reason might be hidden in a detail everyone thinks is boring.

The war started at 2 a.m. on Saturday, February 28th. At that time, stock markets were closed, bond markets were closed, gold futures were closed. The only large-scale liquid trading market still operating globally was Crypto.

BTC became the first asset to price in the war. All panic, all first reactions, were dumped on it first. But precisely because it digested the panic first, by Monday when traditional markets opened, BTC was already rebounding, while the stock market was just beginning to fall.

The crude oil perpetual futures on Hyperliquid are even more exaggerated. Daily trading volume before the war was 21 million dollars, jumping directly to 1.77 billion after the war started—250 times. Crude oil contracts surpassed ETH, becoming the platform's second-largest traded asset. When traders around the world wanted to trade oil over the weekend, the only place they could go was a DeFi protocol.

Bloomberg calls it "24-hour leveraged commodities casino." NYSE and Nasdaq are now competing to offer 24/7 trading solutions. This week, BTC ETFs saw net inflows for 5 consecutive days, totaling approximately 760 million dollars. The fear and greed index is only at 16—extreme panic—yet institutional money is flowing in.

To be honest, I think there's a very deep irony here.

The crypto industry has spent ten years searching for "real use cases." Payment revolution, DeFi Summer, NFT changing creator economy, play-to-earn gaming, RWA tokenizing everything. Every story has been told once, yet none have truly convinced people outside the circle.

As it turns out, what really made the world notice crypto's irreplaceability wasn't any carefully designed product.

It was a war plus a weekend.

The way the crypto industry proved itself wasn't by replacing traditional finance—it was by working overtime when traditional finance closes.

The premise of it outperforming all assets is that there's a war happening on Earth. Its comparative advantage isn't being digital gold—it's never sleeping. Doesn't sound as romantic, but maybe it's more real than every story told over the past ten years.

Two weeks ago, everyone thought BTC would collapse in the war. Two weeks later, it's standing at a higher position than before the war even started.