Bitcoin has traded against the usual crisis script since U.S. and Israeli airstrikes began on Feb. 28. According to the report, BTC gained 12% over that stretch, while the S&P 500 slipped 1% and gold fell 10%. For an asset often treated as a leveraged tech trade during risk-off periods, that gap has pushed investors to revisit what exactly the market is pricing.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan argued on X that bitcoin represents two bets at once. One is the familiar digital gold thesis, competing for part of a roughly $38 trillion store-of-value market. The other is what he described as an out-of-the-money call option on bitcoin actually functioning as currency. In his view, many investors had treated that second piece as close to irrelevant.
Iran’s reported bitcoin toll changed the discussion
Hougan’s view is that the Iran conflict altered the odds on that currency case. The article says Iran announced a $1-per-barrel toll in bitcoin for ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz, equal to roughly $20 million a day. That makes it one of the rare real-world examples of a sovereign state using bitcoin as a settlement tool tied to physical commerce, even if the setting is unusual and highly strained.
He tied the shift to the growing use of financial infrastructure as a geopolitical weapon. The report points back to 2022, when the U.S. removed Russia from the SWIFT network, a move France’s finance minister at the time called a financial “nuclear bomb.” Once major payment rails are seen as politically controlled, the idea of an alternative settlement asset stops looking purely theoretical.
Why the options framing matters
Hougan’s options analogy is central to the argument. Options gain value when the probability of reaching the strike price rises, or when volatility in the underlying asset increases. He says this conflict delivered both at the same time: it raised the perceived odds that bitcoin could be used as money, and it increased volatility around the global monetary order itself.
If that reading holds, bitcoin could react differently in future geopolitical shocks, especially in cases involving countries caught between U.S. and Chinese financial systems. Under that framework, bitcoin’s addressable market would be larger than the digital-gold narrative alone suggests.
The counterargument is still hard to dismiss
The article also notes a clear limitation. Iran’s use of bitcoin may reflect necessity under sanctions rather than genuine preference for a neutral settlement layer. That would say more about the limits of dollar-based enforcement than about bitcoin being ready to serve as global settlement infrastructure today.
Key building blocks remain early: stablecoin settlement, cross-border payment rails, and sovereign wallet adoption. Even so, Hougan’s main point remains intact. During this conflict, the market appears to be pricing bitcoin differently than it did in earlier geopolitical shocks, and the digital gold thesis on its own no longer fully explains the move.