BlockBeats News, February 28th, Bloomberg reported that the escalating tensions among the U.S., Israel, and Iran have led traders to turn to cryptocurrency exchanges for round-the-clock hedging. Perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid tied to oil surged approximately 6.2% to $70.6 per barrel, with gold and silver perpetual contracts each rising over 5% and 8% to $5,464 per ounce and $97.5, respectively. Silver perpetual contracts saw a trading volume of over $4 billion in the past 24 hours, while gold contracts saw a volume of nearly $1.4 billion, and stock index contracts on the platform dropped 1% to 2%.
The Iran conflict triggered a safe-haven selloff in the crypto market, with Bitcoin briefly falling 3.8% to $63,038 before stabilizing around $64,000; ETH dropped 4.5% to $1,836 at one point. According to CoinGecko data, the total market capitalization of digital assets evaporated by around $128 billion after the conflict broke out.
Jake Ostrovskis, Head of OTC Trading at Wintermute, stated that due to Bitcoin’s 24/7 trading, it has become the most liquid asset for traders to express macro views when other markets are closed, and more asset classes are moving towards round-the-clock trading. Charlie Ambrose, Co-Founder of Felix, mentioned that this was another weekend of round-the-clock price discovery through perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid, potentially driving a macro shift in how global markets operate.
