Crypto Market Crash: Bitcoin and Altcoins Drop After Israel’s Attack on Iran

Following Israel’s attack on Iran earlier Saturday morning, Bitcoin and the broader crypto market crashed. While the BTC price dropped to its support of $65,500 altcoins saw an even greater pullback with Ethereum, BNB, SOL, and XRP falling by 3-6% each. Risk-ON assets like crypto quickly react to geopolitical uncertainties. However, the last time such an incident took place, Bitcoin and altcoins quickly rebounded in a short time.

Crypto Market Crash Following Israel’s Attack on Iran

In early Saturday morning, Israel’s military launched “precise strikes” on Iran’s military bases while escalating tensions in the Middle East. Several strong explosions were heard in Iran’s capital city of Tehran as per media reports.

This development was enough to trigger a crypto market crash dragging Bitcoin and altcoins lower. However, market analysts believe that this crash is likely to be short-term. Earlier this year in April, during Israel’s first strike on Iran, the BTC price plunged more than 4% in a day, however, it quickly recovered in just four hours.

The impact is stronger in the altcoin space with Ethereum (ETH) price falling another 3% to $2450 levels and extending its weekly losses to more than 7.68%. On the other hand, the SOL price is down 6.3% at press time slipping all the way under $165. Solana has been an outperformer against BTC and other altcoins with 11% gains over the past month.

Furthermore, market analysts show that the ALT/BTC pair has touched a new low earlier today. Crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen said that there’s a possibility of altcoins falling even further in the coming months.

Tether Investigation Plays Spoilsport for Bitcoin and Altcoins

Reports of the US DOJ launching an investigation into Tether is another reason for the crypto market crash today. However, the USDT stablecoin issuer has clearly refused this fresh set of allegations calling it irresponsible reporting from WSJ.

However, the report has certainly put some dent as Tether (USDT) lost its USD peg and is trading 0.11% down at press time at $0.9983. Tether (USDT) is the largest stablecoin with a $120 billion market cap and has been instrumental in deciding the market movements over the past few years. Some market analysts believe that Tether is too big to fail at this point. Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who studies digital assets, said:

“For the crypto industry and crypto writ large, I do think Tether is too big to fail. “If Tether were to go to zero tomorrow, it would be disastrous for the crypto economy.”

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, on the other hand, believes that the market has become immune to such regulatory developments. He added:

“We won’t really know until next week whether or not this has a longer-term effect on the market, but I would guess it has very little long-term effect, given the market has become immune to regulatory tape bombs”.