Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $103,000—What Triggered It?

After hitting $110,450 on Monday, the Bitcoin price is writing its third consecutive red day as the benchmark cryptocurrency fell 5.3% from an intra-day top of $108,450 to a trough of $102,664 before clawing back to about $104,456 by press time. The sell-off coincided, almost minute-for-minute, with confirmation that Israel had conducted large-scale air-strikes on Iranian nuclear installations, sending ripples through every major asset class.

Why Is Bitcoin Going Down Today?

Israel’s pre-dawn operation — its first overt attack on Iranian territory since the October-2024 raids — instantly repriced global risk. Oil futures jumped more than 10%, spot gold printed a fresh record high above $3,400 an ounce, and US equity futures slid roughly 1.5%. Bitcoin’s draw-down resembled its initial reaction to Iran’s failed missile barrage on Israel in April.

“Oil up. Gold up. Bitcoin down,” Anthony Pompliano wrote on X, noting that the pattern echoes April’s missile incident, after which “Bitcoin ended up outperforming the other two over the first 48 hours.”

Bitcoin educator Peter Duan argued in a separate post that “a dip in Bitcoin happens every time there is serious geopolitical [turmoil] … In the long run, this will only push more people to Bitcoin,” pointing to the 24/7 nature of crypto trading versus the still-closed equity cash markets.

Macro strategist Joe Consorti drilled down on the mechanics: “Bitcoin, S&P and NDX are all being panic-sold. Crude oil, natural gas, gold and US Treasuries are all spiking higher. The flight to safety trade is here.”

A fresh surge in crude is precisely what US policymakers did not need. West Texas Intermediate vaulted past $77 a barrel—its first visit to that level in four months—after Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities, erasing much of the hard-won disinflation dividend and dragging energy back to centre stage. The contract is now more than $21 above its April trough, threatening to unwind the benign price trends that had been taking hold.

This comes after US inflation data once again surprised to the upside this week. May’s Consumer Price Index rose just 0.1% on the month and 2.4% year-over-year, while core CPI matched that modest 0.1% gain and held at 2.8% on an annual basis. Producer prices told a similar tale on Thursday, with the headline PPI up only 0.1% month-over-month and 2.6% on the year, both below consensus expectations.

Lower fuel costs had been a cornerstone of President Trump’s strategy for reining in inflation; the renewed march higher in oil now threatens that narrative. If energy continues to climb, markets will anticipate a rebound in headline inflation and the Federal Reserve may feel compelled to postpone the rate-cut cycle traders had pencilled in for September.

Bitcoin, which is acutely sensitive to fluctuations in global liquidity, often underperforms when the policy outlook tilts toward tighter financial conditions—explaining its abrupt slide alongside the spike in crude.

The newsflow triggered one of the heaviest forced-liquidation washes of 2025. CoinGlass data show that roughly $1.14 billion in crypto futures positions were wiped out over the past 24 hours, $1.04 billion of which were longs, as 236,788 traders were forced out of the market.

The single-largest hit was a $201 million BTC-USDT long on Binance, the biggest one-ticket liquidation since January. For Bitcoin alone, long-side liquidations totalled $443 million. For the entire crypto market, this is the worst wipe-out since the post-tariff rout of February 3, when $1.25 billion was liquidated across the complex.