Within minutes of the first US-Israeli missiles hitting Tehran on Saturday morning, a different kind of exodus was underway.
Crypto outflows from Nobitex, the largest cryptocurrency in Iran, have increased by 700%, according to blockchain analytics company Elliptic. The spike was a massive flight, executed in real time, with Iranians rushing out of the country suddenly under military bombardment.
Nobitex has processed $7.2 billion in crypto sales by 2025 and serves more than 11 million users, Elliptic said. It allows Iranians to convert rials into crypto and leads to foreign wallets that are a direct conduit around the country’s crippled banking system and a suffocating web of international sanctions.
Elliptic’s first tracking of the weekend’s outflows shows funds flowing into overseas exchanges that have historically received significant Iranian inflows, suggesting that the crypto is taking off.
Elliptic flagged similar spikes earlier this year: a massive outage on January 9 coincided with anti-government protests and government-imposed internet blackouts. Even during that blackout, some outages continued, raising questions about who maintains access to Nobitex to hold when the platform’s website goes dark.
Two more additions to accompany the announcements of new US sanctions on Iranian players. Each time, crypto served as an escape …
“The outflow of money may represent a large flight from Iran that bypasses the normal banking system,” said Dr. Tom Robinson, founder of the Elliptic.
Bitcoin weekend rollercoaster
The strikes – dubbed Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Epic Fury by the Pentagon – struck at 9:45 a.m. Tehran time on Saturday, targeting nuclear facilities, missile sites and the capital’s Pasteur district where supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lived.
Iran confirmed it hours after the death of Khamenei, along with other senior officials.
Crypto markets reacted immediately. Bitcoin fell from $67,000 to below $64,000, shedding nearly 5% in minutes. The total crypto market capitalization fell by $128 billion as forced liquidations hit the exchanges.
Then came the snapback. News of the ensuing events forced Bitcoin briefly above $68,000, as traders speculated that the beheading might ease the conflict. But the rally was disrupted as Iranian retaliation – missiles and drones launched from Israel, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and US bases across the region – made it clear that this was not a contained event.
By Sunday afternoon, Bitcoin had settled around $65,300. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is flirting with $70,000.
“The performance of the crypto market today can mainly be explained by a more restrained reaction than expected,” Thomas Probst, a research analyst at Kaiko, wrote Bitcoin Magazine.
He noted that when US stocks opened slightly better on Monday, they reinforced a bullish bias, with Bitcoin approaching $70,000 and major altcoins posting gains of 6-10%.
Open interest rose again on February 28, indicating that traders were adding new positions rather than reducing exposure ahead of the event. According to Axis, this behavior shows that the market had put a lot of value on the development of the country and no longer considered it a serious threat.
However, the options market tells a very cautionary tale. At Deribit, $1.9 billion in Bitcoin options were placed at the $60,000 strike price over the weekend – a huge demand for downside protection that suggests high-level traders are hedging the future.
Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, said that bitcoin’s reaction to times like this challenges the idea that it trades only as a proxy for tech-risk and instead shows a growing recognition of its role in times of counterparty risk.
“As we saw during the banking crisis in 2023, when the market reached bitcoin rather than chaos, it gives the impression that many people understand the value of bitcoin in a chaotic world full of counterparty risks,” Lamarre wrote. Bitcoin Magazine.
Conflict beyond crypto
The economic consequences of the conflict extend beyond crypto. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has announced that no ships will be allowed to cross the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s daily oil flows.
Oil futures rose on Monday’s open. Goldman Sachs indicated that oil could reach $100 per barrel if the conflict continues in the four to five weeks President Trump raised his comments over the weekend.
For Bitcoin, the Iran crisis underscores fundamental tensions.
Crypto is built to function without state control – and Nobitex’s 700% outflow spike proves that it can. But that service puts it at the forefront of the financial war between Western sanctions regimes and enemy states.
