Bitcoin Passed Key Stress Test Amid Oil Volatility

Tom Lee says Bitcoin’s rally during an oil surge linked to tensions in the Middle East shows the asset has passed a key resistance test.

Tom Lee of Fundstrat said Bitcoin passed a major test after rebounding over the weekend as oil prices soared due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

He said the price action was a sign that last October’s massive deleveraging was finally behind the market, allowing Bitcoin to re-emerge as a credible store of value.

Speculation has been eliminated

Lee was speaking to CNBC’s Scott Wapner on the sidelines of the Future Proof conference in Miami, where he highlighted that the crypto market has already gone through its bear market.

“We have already seen a bear market in software, Mag-7 and crypto,” he said. “I think it’s already eliminated a lot of speculation.”

He also said he expects markets to close March in positive territory and potentially hit 5,300 on the S&P 500 later in the year. He warned, however, that there could be a 20% drop at some point, probably when markets stop reacting to good news.

On Bitcoin in particular, Lee has been blunt. When asked by Wapner whether the OG cryptocurrency had failed as a safe haven, given that gold had outperformed during the last period of market stress, Lee acknowledged the weakness but presented it as the product of extreme conditions.

“Bitcoin basically broke out on October 10 because it was the largest deleveraging event in crypto history,” he said. “When gold went up, Bitcoin went down.”

But according to him, all this is in the past. “We went through a winter where a lot of the speculation and leverage disappeared,” he said, highlighting the weekend’s price action as a turning point, as BTC weathered the sharp rise in oil prices when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz.

“This weekend kind of showed that Bitcoin is coming back into vogue as a store of value,” Lee said, noting that BTC held above $70,000 even as oil rose aggressively.

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Where is Bitcoin now

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at around $70,000, down just 0.2% in the past 24 hours after briefly touching $71,600 per CoinGecko data. Over the past week, it’s up about 3% and nearly 7% over two weeks, although it remains down about 12% year over year and is more than 44% below its October 2025 all-time high.

The on-chain data picture is mixed, with analysis from Binance Research showing that around 29,000 BTC was removed from exchanges while the price was trading between $65,000 and $75,000, a trend that contrasts with an earlier sell-off from $92,000 to $62,000 when exchange balances were increasing.