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Bitcoin holds near $73.8k as Trump bets Iran oil shock will fade fast

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Bitcoin investors face ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ quantum threat

Trump says Iran war oil spike will ‘drop like a rolling stone’ once fighting ends, even as crude stays above $100 and crypto trades through the turmoil.

Summary

  • Trump dismisses Iran war oil spike as budget “negligible” while crude trades above $100.
  • He signals more strikes are possible even as he claims to spare key Iranian oil infrastructure.
  • Bitcoin and Ethereum rally, reinforcing the “digital macro hedge” narrative despite still behaving like high‑beta risk assets.

Trump is again trying to sell markets on the idea that the Iran war–driven oil spike is temporary, even as crude trades comfortably above the three‑digit threshold. In new comments flagged by Jinshi Finance, he told PBS reporters the US is “doing very well” on Iran, calling the budget impact of the conflict “negligible” because Tehran is “involved in terrorism.” He insisted that “once the war is over, oil prices will drop like a rolling stone,” echoing earlier statements that the surge in crude is a “small price to pay” for dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

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Trump also claimed he has deliberately held back from targeting key civilian energy infrastructure, saying he “left a lot of infrastructure in Tehran” and could destroy the country’s power plants “in an hour” but is trying to avoid a years‑long reconstruction process and deeper social trauma. He added that the US has kept a “100 yards” buffer around “everything related to oil facilities,” and specifically cited Kharg Island, a major Iranian export hub, saying he chose not to blow up its pipelines because “it would take years to connect them.” At the same time, he warned he would still “strike again,” signalling that escalation risk remains firmly on the table.

Those comments follow days of market turmoil as Iran‑related supply fears pushed benchmark crude above 100 per barrel and forced insurers to reprice risk in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has repeatedly framed the situation as a trade‑off, arguing that short‑term pain at the pump is acceptable if it neutralizes Iran’s ability to threaten global shipping and regional stability. For now, that narrative appears to be holding with parts of his domestic base, but it does little to change the underlying reality for refiners, airlines, or import‑dependent economies that are now exposed to higher input costs and tighter margins.

Crypto markets, by contrast, are digesting the conflict with relative composure. Bitcoin (BTC) is changing hands near $73,800, up roughly 5.8% over the last 24 hours, with a 24‑hour range between about $69,460 and $73,770 and turnover above $55 billion. Ethereum trades around $2,200, higher by roughly 6.8% on the day, after swinging between about $2,042 and $2,200 in the same period. That mix of elevated volatility and net gains has reinforced the “digital macro hedge” narrative some funds are leaning into, even as skeptics point out that BTC and ETH continue to trade like high‑beta risk assets whenever energy, rates, or war headlines surprise.

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Crypto World

North Korean Hackers Infiltrated Crypto For Seven Years

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North Korean Hackers Infiltrated Crypto For Seven Years

North Korean IT workers have been embedding themselves in crypto companies and decentralized finance projects for at least seven years, according to a cybersecurity analyst.

“Lots of DPRK IT workers built the protocols you know and love, all the way back to DeFi summer,” said MetaMask developer and security researcher Taylor Monahan on Sunday. 

Monahan claimed that over 40 DeFi platforms, some being well-known names, have had North Korean IT workers working on their protocols.

The “seven years of blockchain dev experience” on their resume is “not a lie,” she added.

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The Lazarus Group is a North Korean-affiliated hacking collective that has stolen an estimated $7 billion in crypto since 2017, according to analysts at creator network R3ACH. 

It has been linked to the industry’s highest-profile hacks, including the $625 million Ronin Bridge exploit in 2022, the $235 million WazirX hack in 2024 and the $1.4 billion Bybit heist in 2025.

Monahan’s comments came just hours after the Drift Protocol said it had “medium-high confidence” that the recent $280 million exploit against it was carried out by a North Korean state-affiliated group.

DeFi execs speak up on DPRK infiltration attempts

Tim Ahhl, founder of the Titan Exchange, a Solana-based DEX aggregator, said that in a previous job, “we interviewed someone who turned out to be a Lazarus operative.”

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Ahhl said the candidate “did video calls and was extremely qualified.” He declined an in-person interview and they later discovered his name in a Lazarus “info dump.” 

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control has a website where crypto businesses can screen counterparties against updated OFAC sanctions lists and be alert to patterns consistent with IT worker fraud. 

Lazarus Group attack timeline. Source: R3ACH Network

Related: Drift Protocol says $280M exploit took ‘months of deliberate preparation’

Drift Protocol targeted by DPRK third-party intermediaries 

Drift Protocol’s postmortem on last week’s $280 million exploit also pointed to North Korean-affiliated hackers for the attack.

However, it said the face-to-face meetings that eventually led to the exploit were not with North Korean nationals, but rather “third-party intermediaries” with “fully constructed identities including employment histories, public-facing credentials, and professional networks.”

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“Years later, and it seems Lazarus now has non-NKs [North Koreans] working for them to con people in person,” said Ahhl. 

Threats via job interviews are not sophisticated

Lazarus Group is the collective name for “all DPRK state-sponsored cyber actors,” explained blockchain sleuth ZachXBT on Sunday.

“The main issue is that everyone groups them all together when the complexity of threats is different,” he added. 

ZachXBT said that threats via job postings, LinkedIn, email, Zoom, or interviews are “basic and in no way sophisticated … the only thing about it is they’re relentless.”

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“If you or your team still falls for them in 2026, you’re very likely negligent,” he said. 

There are two types of attack vectors, one more sophisticated than the other. Source: ZachXBT

Magazine: No more 85% Bitcoin collapses, Taiwan needs BTC war reserve: Hodler’s Digest