March 9, 2026 | Markets

Bitcoin was trading at approximately $67,378 on Monday after briefly touching $73,000 earlier in the week, pulled lower by a surging U.S. dollar and an oil price shock triggered by military conflict in the Middle East. The selloff is hitting crypto at the same time it is battering equities, raising fresh questions about whether Bitcoin can hold its key support level near $64,000.

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The Macro Squeeze

The immediate catalyst is a U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict that erupted roughly a week ago and has since disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping corridor that handles more than $500 billion in annual oil and gas trade. Murban crude, the main Middle East benchmark, has climbed above $103 per barrel. WTI and Brent are both up roughly 30% since the conflict began.

Higher oil prices feed directly into inflation expectations, and markets are repricing the likelihood that central banks will stay tighter for longer. The U.S. Dollar Index posted its steepest weekly gain in a year, which compounds the pressure on risk assets. A stronger dollar tightens global liquidity, particularly in emerging markets where debt and trade are priced in USD, leaving less discretionary capital available for assets like Bitcoin and equities.

The MSCI global equity gauge fell 3.7% last week. S&P 500 futures dropped more than 2% in Asian trading on Monday. The VIX, a widely watched measure of expected market volatility, reached its highest level since April 2025, when tariff-driven market turmoil caused a comparable spike.

Veteran market strategist Ed Yardeni raised his probability of a U.S. market meltdown to 35%, up from 20%, while cutting his melt-up scenario to just 5%. "The US economy and stock market are stuck between Iran and a hard place," Yardeni said. He added: "If the oil shock persists, the Fed's dual mandate would be stuck between the increasing risk of higher inflation and rising unemployment."

Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone was more direct about crypto specifically: "If volatility from commodities and crude oil trickles over into the stock market, that's bad for crypto."

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Bitcoin Moves With Equities, But Not Entirely

Bitcoin's 30-day rolling correlation with the S&P 500 stood at 0.55 as of March 1, and that figure hit its highest reading of the year on March 7. To put that in context: the same correlation was around 0.15 in 2021 and reached 0.75 in January 2026. Bitcoin increasingly tracks equity market sentiment during periods of stress. Bitcoin's volatility correlation to stocks also hit 0.88 during this period, the highest reading ever recorded according to Investing.com, a data point that reinforces why the surge in the VIX carries particular weight for crypto markets.

That said, on-chain data offers a more nuanced picture beneath the macro noise. Glassnode data, as cited by CoinDesk, shows more than 400,000 BTC was accumulated in the $60,000 to $70,000 price zone during the recent downturn. Separately, on-chain analysis indicates that miner net selling collapsed by 87% between February 5 and March 1, falling from roughly 243,737 BTC to 31,967 BTC. Some analysts read this kind of steep drop in miner selling as a signal of supply-side exhaustion, meaning the entities most likely to sell are pulling back.

Research firm NYDIG also estimates that only about 25% of Bitcoin's price movement is explained by its equity correlation. The remaining 75% is driven by factors specific to crypto markets.

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ETF Inflows Break a Four-Month Streak

Spot Bitcoin ETFs drew approximately $1.1 billion in net inflows across three trading sessions from March 2 through March 4, snapping a four-month run of net outflows. BlackRock's IBIT fund alone pulled in $306.6 million on March 4. Some analysts have used this as a foundation to revive a "safe haven" narrative for Bitcoin.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pushed back on that framing, a view shared by other market observers. Balchunas and others attributed the inflow recovery to fading institutional headwinds and a broader shift in market sentiment rather than any durable premium tied to geopolitical risk.

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What This Means Outside the United States

For users in Nigeria and across South Asia, the macro dynamics read differently than they do for institutional investors in New York.

Nigeria is projected to reach 28.7 million crypto users in 2026. The country processed around $59 billion in crypto transaction volume between July 2023 and June 2024, placing it among the second-largest crypto markets by adoption after India. The naira has lost more than 40% of its value since 2023, depreciating from roughly 750 to 1,600 per dollar. When the DXY surges, import costs rise faster, inflation accelerates, and the value of local savings erodes further. Stablecoins pegged to the dollar (primarily USDT and USDC) account for 43% of sub-$1 million crypto transactions in Nigeria, used primarily as a savings tool rather than a speculative one.

South Asia shows a similar pattern at greater scale. India leads the world with roughly 150 million crypto users. Pakistan has 18.2 million users and added 5.4 million over the past year alone. The region is the fastest-growing crypto adoption market globally, with 80% year-over-year growth recorded between January and July 2025. Both India and Pakistan are major oil importers, meaning a sustained run above $100 per barrel widens their current account deficits, pressures local currencies, and reduces the capital available for savings and investment. Pakistan has also moved to formalize its crypto regulatory framework, establishing the Pakistan Crypto Council and the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in March 2025, a development that takes on added significance as more citizens turn to digital assets as a financial escape valve.

The core tension is this: the same macro shock that may push institutional investors to reduce Bitcoin exposure in the short term could increase retail demand across the Global South, where crypto functions less as a speculative bet and more as a practical financial tool.

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What to Watch

Key support for Bitcoin sits at $64,000. Analysts at BeInCrypto expect the asset to consolidate within a $65,000 to $73,300 range through March absent a decisive breakout. Ether was trading at $1,981 on Monday, up 2.3% in 24 hours. Whether Bitcoin holds above $64,000 will likely depend on how long the oil shock persists and whether the dollar rally continues to tighten global liquidity conditions.

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Sources: CoinDesk, Benzinga, The Block, HedgeCo, BeInCrypto, TronWeekly, Breet, Chainalysis, MEXC, Investing.com