Bitcoin Recovers to $61K After Tension Between Israel and Iran

Bitcoin (BTC) rose above $61,500 in the morning after falling to $60,300 late yesterday as the conflict in the Middle East grew. However, this has diminished rally hopes for the asset.

Iran, which launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel yesterday, threatened a new attack, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing retaliation.

While BTC suffered its biggest drop in more than a month, gold rose. Bitcoin’s decline was as high as 6% at one point, with 24-hour losses approaching 3.5%. Presto Research investors said this was the worst start to a new month for the asset.

Polymarket bookmakers predict a 49 percent chance of Israel retaliating against Iran by the end of the week.

“October has been a strong month for BTC in past cycles, with only two years of losses seen in the last 11 years,” Presto said, noting gold’s superior performance in the last 24 hours.

CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index, which considers the general situation of the crypto market, experienced its worst decline in recent weeks, falling by 4.7%.

“Last night’s BTC price action following Iran’s attack in May (BTC -4% vs. gold +0.8%) is quite confusing, especially as BlackRock considers BTC a gold-like risk-off,” wrote researchers led by Peter Chung. “It’s even more confusing considering what he sees as its existence.” “The reality is that the difference in short-term price movements of these two assets reflects the maturity levels of the assets.”

“Gold is a much more mature asset with a 5,000-year history. BTC, on the other hand, has only 15 years of history, although it has the characteristics that make gold a good store of value. This means it is in the early stages of mainstream adoption and its narrative is still not fully understood.” .”

According to CoinGecko data, Dogecoin led losses among major tokens with an 8 percent decline in the last 24 hours, while XRP, Solana’s SOL, BNB Chain’s BNB and ether lost up to 6 percent in value.

Smaller tokens with market caps under $2 billion performed the worst, with Sei Network’s SEI token, memecoin floki and Starknet’s STARK falling as much as 16 percent.