Bitcoin Tumbles Amid U.S.-Iran Clashes

Bitcoin tumbled to the $62,000 range Monday as a weekend exchange of gunfire between U.S. and Iranian forces threatened to spark another energy crisis. Market data showed the top cryptocurrency plunged from a 24-hour peak of $64,385 late Sunday to $62,037 by 10:15 a.m. EST Monday.

While the cryptocurrency attempted to reclaim the $63,000 resistance level, another sell-off saw it retreat to $62,200, reversing earlier gains and leaving it down nearly 3%. The decline dragged its market capitalization down from $1.28 trillion to approximately $1.25 trillion as of 12:40 p.m. EST. The slide, in turn, helped trim the crypto economy’s aggregate market capitalization to $2.24 trillion.

Meanwhile, the slide triggered the liquidation of $83 million in long leveraged positions and $12 million in shorts. Overall, liquidations across the crypto economy topped $322 million, with liquidated long bets accounting for $267 million of the total.

Following earlier strikes in the week, the U.S. military upped the ante Sunday, striking more than 100 targets across Iran. The U.S. maintains the strikes were in response to Iranian attacks on shipping vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. In addition to the strikes, some media reports suggested the U.S. military was contemplating a blockade on Iranian ports.

Iran, which rejects the allegations, launched retaliatory strikes targeting U.S. bases and installations across five Gulf countries, including Qatar and Tehran’s ally Oman. Iran insists Washington is violating a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

The apparent return to full combat operations came days after U.S. President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire between the two sides over. The U.S. leader also accused Tehran of violating the terms of the MoU, which requires Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Following the latest escalation, oil prices jumped 4.5%, with the global benchmark Brent crude breaching the $80-per-barrel mark. According to analysts, market concern is expanding beyond crude oil prices, with investors increasingly focused on disruptions to global refining capacity and fuel supply chains. Ongoing conflicts have affected refinery operations across the Middle East and, recently, key global shipping routes in the Russia-Ukraine region.

“Even if crude oil prices stabilize, gasoline and diesel prices could remain elevated due to limited refined fuel availability. This creates a risk that energy inflation may prove more persistent than markets currently anticipate,” a Bitunix analyst asserted in a recent report.

For global markets, including crypto, the central question for this week extends beyond whether U.S. inflation rises again. The bigger issue is whether global capital costs continue moving higher.

With AI investment absorbing significant funding, energy supply chains facing uncertainty, and Federal Reserve policy remaining unsettled, risk assets are likely to remain driven by the interaction among interest rates, liquidity conditions and corporate financing costs.

“For bitcoin, reclaiming and holding above $64,000 could improve short-term momentum. However, continued pressure from higher capital costs may keep BTC trapped within a broader consolidation range,” the analyst said.

Matt Shea’s documentary is bookended by two stark facts. One is that the wealth of the world’s 12 richest people is equal to that of the poorest 50% of humanity (you can argue about whether 12 is exactly right, but it’s certainly a horrifyingly small number). The other is that in recent US election cycles, the fossil fuel industry has been replaced as the biggest political donor by a new force: cryptocurrency.

In an hour that manages to be more entertaining than terrifying despite sailing into very murky waters, Shea explores how a fresh breed of tech billionaires are looking to make a bold new move. He shows that in a traditional western democracy, the principle that citizens all have an equal vote and are all equally beholden to the law is heavily compromised by a tiny minority of rich citizens. These people influence what the electorate votes for, by bankrolling politicians and owning media companies, as well as using their wealth to ensure rules do not properly apply to them. But plutocrats still find this system frustrating, thanks to those pesky elections and that annoying rule of law. What’s next?

Shea meets people who have made silly amounts of wonga from cryptocurrency – a sector that claims to be dedicated to freedom and transparency, but is notoriously resistant to proper accountability. First, he observes as Justin Sun, a Chinese tech entrepreneur with personal wealth of around $8.5bn, gets his crypto trading network Tron listed on Nasdaq without going through the standard process of listing the company, via a “reverse merger” with a failing company. That is to say, he buys the business – which is already listed – and changes its name to Tron Inc.

That’s all perfectly legal and not too remarkable, but soon we’re off to a muddy peninsula in the Danube between Croatia and Serbia. This has been claimed by crypto bros as Liberland, a “micronation” that will supposedly become a hi-tech utopia where no tax is paid and regulatory red tape is eliminated. At the moment, though, it’s a few tents that are regularly raided by Croatian police, who disagree about the land having no pre-existing owner.

Shea meets the president, a man named Vit Jedlicka who tries and fails to control what his acolytes talk to the film-maker about. One of them escapes for a one-on-one with Shea, where he stumbles as he attempts to counter the argument that Liberland’s electoral system, under which the purchase of more crypto “merits” gives you more voting power, means its version of liberty is available to relatively few people. The elected prime minister of Liberland? Justin Sun.

At this point Shea is jousting for fun with weirdos, as he is when he talks to the writer Curtis Yarvin, who believes democratic governments are inferior to rule via corporate boards headed up by CEO “monarchs”. The programme gets wackier still when Shea arrives in Singapore for Token 2049, a conference for people who believe crypto is the future and governments can’t be trusted. A man with bitcoin logos all over his suit babbles something about a “new world order” imminently implementing a satanic global dominion.

There’s more fun and games as Shea tours the crypto-themed stands, but one of the main sponsors of the event is Tron, and the keynote speaker is Donald Trump Jr. He’s there on behalf of World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by the Trump family, who are estimated to have made more than $2bn from their various cryptocurrency ventures. Several investors in World Liberty – among them Justin Sun, before he spectacularly fell out with the Trumps – have subsequently benefited from favourable legal or regulatory decisions by the US government. Trump has denied any link between investments in his family companies and government decisions affecting the investors. His representative calls it: “the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed … for a decade. … There are no conflicts of interest.” When Shea raises the issue with Sun, a PR adviser heckles from behind the camera and shuts the question down.

Here is where Shea’s thesis falters slightly. Replacing governments with digital hegemonies might make sense to crypto billionaires, who don’t have to worry about things a functional society offers such as reliable physical infrastructure or a healthy workforce, because they just want machines to turn their money into more money. But taking over countries, or setting up new ones, is unnecessary for now thanks to the Trump regime. There’s no need to form your own government if the current US administration already offers frictionless routes to even greater wealth.

Either way, though, none of this is good and all of it is to be monitored, albeit probably from a position of helpless impotence. The rich keep getting richer and the powerful keep finding ways to help them do it.

The adjustment landed at block height 957600. Difficulty moved from 133.87 trillion to 127.17 trillion, a decline of roughly 6.70 trillion. The change took effect at 4:09:11 p.m., based on the block timestamp. The prior epoch ran about 14 days, 18 hours, and 9 minutes, longer than Bitcoin’s 14-day target for 2,016 blocks. That pace works out to an average block time of 10 minutes, 32 seconds, about 5.1% slower than the protocol’s 10-minute target. The 5% cut brought the network back toward that target.

A Year Defined by Wide Swings

Eight of the 14 difficulty adjustments so far in 2026 have been negative and six positive. The average adjustment was negative 0.87%, but the average absolute move was 5.30%, a gap that points to sharp back-and-forth activity hiding behind a mild-looking average. Compounded from the difficulty in place before the first adjustment on Jan. 8, the network has dropped approximately 14.22%. The July 11 reading ranks as the third-lowest of the year, behind only June 13’s 124.93 trillion and Feb. 7’s 125.86 trillion.

Hashrate Slides Toward Its 2026 Range

The seven-day average hashrate via hashrateindex.com stood near 908 EH/s on July 11, down about 14.8% from the Jan. 1 level of roughly 1,065 EH/s. That figure sits about 21.3% below the one-year peak of 1,154 EH/s reached in October 2025, and just 3.3% above the 2026 low of 879 EH/s set in early February.

The most recent drop happened fast. Hashrate was near 986 EH/s on July 1 and fell to about 908 EH/s by July 11, a decline of roughly 7.9% in ten days. That pullback slowed block production and fed directly into the 5% difficulty cut.

Hashprice Climbs but Stays Deeply Discounted

Hashprice, the expected revenue miners earn per petahash per second, closed near $31.1 on July 11. That marks a recovery of about 12.5% from the $27.6 level seen around July 1, but the metric remains down roughly 16.4% since Jan. 1 and about 37.2% below its one-year high of $49.4, reached in late October 2025. The 2026 low of $27.2 came in early June.

How Difficulty, Hashrate, and Hashprice Fit Together

Difficulty is a lagging measure. It does not track hashrate directly, but it reacts to how fast the previous 2,016 blocks were mined. When hashrate falls, blocks slow, and difficulty drops at the next adjustment. Lower difficulty then raises the expected revenue for each unit of hashpower still running, which can lift hashprice if Bitcoin’s price and fee income hold steady.

The June-to-July stretch shows the mechanism in motion. Hashprice bottomed near $27.2 in early June. Difficulty fell 10.09% on June 13. Hashrate then returned and difficulty rose 7.15% on June 26. Hashrate weakened again, and difficulty fell another 5% on July 11, with hashprice ending the period at $31.1.

All three measures have traced a pattern of lower highs in 2026. Difficulty peaked at 146.47 trillion on Jan. 8 and has not come close since, topping out near 138.97 trillion in April and 133.87 trillion in June. Hashprice peaked at $49.4 in October 2025, then $41.8 in January, then $39 in May. Hashrate peaked at 1,154 EH/s in October 2025, 1,087 EH/s in late February, and has struggled to hold 1,000 EH/s since.

What It Means for Miners and Traders

Each recovery in hashrate and hashprice has fallen short of the one before it. Difficulty relief has softened the blow for miners still operating, but it has not been enough to restore hashprice to earlier levels. For traders, the pattern points to a mining sector adjusting to tighter margins rather than one in a single sustained pullback. Effective computing power has repeatedly returned to a band between roughly 880 and 910 EH/s before rebounding, though it remains unclear whether that range marks a durable floor or another stop on the way lower.