Minutes after the first US-Israeli missiles hit Tehran on Saturday morning, another kind of exodus was already underway.
Crypto outflows from Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, surged 700%, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The spike was capital flight, carried out in real time, by Iranians racing to move money out of a country suddenly under full-scale military bombardment.
Nobitex processed $7.2 billion in crypto transactions by 2025 and serves more than 11 million users, Elliptic said. It allows Iranians to convert rials into crypto and withdraw to external wallets, which are a direct pipeline around the country’s crippled banking system and the web of international sanctions that are suffocating it.
Elliptic’s initial tracking of the weekend’s outflows shows funds flowing to overseas exchanges that have historically received significant Iranian inflows, suggesting the crypto is being moved out.
Elliptic marked similar surges earlier this year: a massive outflow on January 9 coincided with widespread anti-regime protests and a government-imposed internet blackout. Even during this blackout, some outflows continued, raising questions about who retains access to Nobitex’s holdings when the platform’s website goes dark.
Two additional increases were in line with announcements of new US sanctions against Iranian actors. Each time, crypto served as an escape hatch.
“The outflow represents potential capital flight from Iran that bypasses the traditional banking system,” said Dr. Tom Robinson, Elliptic co-founder.
Bitcoin’s weekend roller coaster
The attacks – codenamed Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Epic Fury by the Pentagon – struck at 9:45 a.m. Tehran time Saturday, targeting nuclear facilities, missile sites and the Pasteur district of the capital, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was staying.
Iran confirmed Khamenei’s death hours later, along with other top officials.
The crypto markets reacted immediately. Bitcoin plunged from around $67,000 to below $64,000, losing nearly 5% in minutes. Total crypto market capitalization fell $128 billion as forced liquidations overwhelmed exchanges.
Then came the snapback. News of the following events briefly pushed Bitcoin above $68,000 as traders speculated that the regime’s beheading could shorten the conflict. But the rally fizzled as Iranian retaliation — missiles and drones fired at Israel, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain and US bases across the region — made it clear 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 positive development of the crypto market today can primarily be explained by a significantly more restrained reaction than expected,” Thomas Probst, a research analyst at Kaiko, wrote to Bitcoin Magazine.
He noted that when US stocks opened weakly positive on Monday, it reinforced the upward bias, with Bitcoin approaching $70,000 and major altcoins showing gains of 6-10%.
Open interest also increased on February 28, indicating that traders were adding new positions rather than reducing exposure ahead of the event. According to Axis, this behavior indicates that the market had largely priced in geopolitical developments and no longer viewed them as a major threat.
Still, the options market tells a more cautious story. On Deribit, $1.9 billion in Bitcoin put options were stacked at the $60,000 strike price over the weekend — strong demand for downside protection that suggests sophisticated traders are hedging for the worst to come.
Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, said bitcoin’s response to periods like this challenges the idea that it acts only as a risk-based technology proxy and instead reflects a growing recognition of its role in times of counterparty risk.
“Just as we saw during the banking crisis of 2023, where the market runs to bitcoin in chaos, it gives insight that more people understand bitcoin’s value in a chaotic world full of counterparty risk,” Lamarre wrote to Bitcoin Magazine.
A conflict beyond crypto
The financial ramifications of the conflict go far beyond crypto. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that no vessels would be allowed to cross the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s daily oil supply passes.
Oil futures rose at Monday’s open. Goldman Sachs has predicted that oil could hit $100 per barrel. barrel if the conflict persists for the four to five weeks that President Trump suggested in remarks over the weekend.
For Bitcoin, the Iran crisis underscores a fundamental tension.
Crypto was built to function outside of government control – and Nobitex’s 700% outflow increase proves that it can. But that same utility makes it a front line in the financial shadow war between Western sanctions regimes and resistance states.