On May 6, 2026, while the East Coast market had not completely cooled down, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran on social media - "Agreement or Bombing". He reduced whether to end the "Epic Rage/Epic Fury" operation and whether to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to a binary choice, equating the security premium of global oil supply to be decided by a tweet. For all screens displaying CL and BRENTOIL curves, this was not just political rhetoric but an instantaneous recalculation of oil risk premiums, inflation expectations, and even global asset discount rates: If the Strait of Hormuz is open, the market will erase some of the war premiums; if bombing escalates, the risk to oil supply will be re-accounted into every balance sheet.

On-chain, this macro jitter immediately materialized into a life-and-death line of addresses. Address 0xebe…14070 accumulated long positions in CL and BRENTOIL, with a nominal position of about $55.36 million, opening at CL $107.1 and BRENTOIL $112.4, currently realizing a loss of approximately $586,000, with floating losses expanding to about $10.14 million, during which about $93,000 in funding fees were paid, forcing partial liquidation. Geopolitics were compressed into the margin curve, with every expected point in oil prices rebounding pulling the survival of on-chain leverage with it. At the same time, in the traditional market, the highly leveraged bet on BTC by MicroStrategy had its target price cut from $705 to $570 by Benchmark, while Hut 8, transitioning to a forward AI data center, surged pre-market due to at least $9.8 billion in lease contracts. This differentiation, in turn, prompted a core pricing question: during a cycle of drastic oil price resets, will BTC and ETH be treated as hedges against energy and geopolitical uncertainty, or continue to be viewed as high-beta chips dancing to interest rates and risk preferences? This will directly rewrite the on-chain liquidation order and fund migration routes in the following weeks.

Agreement or Bombing: Oil Price Expectations Being Twisted

Trump compressed the narrative into a crude binary switch: Iran agrees to the agreement, the "Epic Rage/Epic Fury" ends, the Strait of Hormuz reopens; Iran refuses, and bombing resumes at a higher scale and intensity. For traders, this is not just a simple verbal battle but a direct rewriting of the Middle East's supply path in the coming weeks - the Strait of Hormuz itself carries a significant portion of the world's maritime crude oil and product oil; its "open" and "close" practically equals twisting the faucet of oil risk premiums: on one side, the risk premium rapidly compresses, with long-end oil price curves bending down, while on the other side, supply interruption expectations rise, with short-end contracts getting pushed higher, leading CL and BRENTOIL to experience severe intraday pulls, resulting in significant floating losses and passive reductions in related leveraged longs.

This seismic movement in oil prices does not remain a "localized incident" within the energy sector. The spike in oil prices raises inflation expectations, pushing nominal yields and real rates higher, effectively adjusting the discount rate of all risk assets upwards; and once the market bets on "ceasefire + opening of the strait", the tail risks of inflation will cool, real rate expectations will be pushed back down, and a declining discount rate will again be interpreted as favorable for the valuation of long-duration assets. Assets like BTC and ETH are thus reinserted into this macro framework: in a "inflation shock + rising real rates" scenario, they operate more like high-beta chips suppressed by high discount rates; in a "falling oil prices + cooling inflation" scenario, they are viewed as risk assets that enjoy the benefits of low rates alongside other growth assets.

The issue is that the ultimatum laid both paths on the table, yet the probability weights are in constant flux. On the screens, commodity and high-leverage positions are forced to quickly reprice - longs in CL and BRENTOIL switch expectations between one or two scenarios of oil price changes, releasing margin pressure from passive liquidation will trace along the chain of "higher discount rate - higher volatility - tighter leverage", affecting the derivative structure of BTC and ETH and on-chain leverage positions, influencing the crypto market not by any singular threat but by how the oil price risk premium is ultimately locked into a certain range.

The Shadow of Liquidation for On-Chain Oil Whales

Before and after Trump's "agreement or bombing" ultimatum was thrown out, address 0xebe…14070 was like an on-chain oil whale locked under a spotlight. It accumulated approximately $55.36 million in long positions on CL and BRENTOIL, opened around CL $107.1 and BRENTOIL $112.4, which was originally a typical trend bet on oil prices "rising higher". However, as the market began to reprice the risk of passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the expectations of crude oil swung violently between "supply tightening" and "agreement realization", causing this long account's profit curve to swiftly reverse: realizing a loss of about $586,000, with paper losses ballooning to about $10.14 million, while also being forced into partial liquidation during high volatility, paying about $93,000 in funding fees just to maintain this massive leveraged position at the table.

On-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) has continuously tracked the crude contracts of this address, exposing the tightness of this funding chain to the public: the ultimatum changes the oil price risk premium, but what's presented on-chain is a specific account's margin slowly being eroded, and eventually forced to liquidate to stop the bleeding. Policy statements first send price signals in the futures market, then by reflecting the profit and loss changes of CL and BRENTOIL, directly mirror the available margin and risk parameters of 0xebe…14070, forming a transparent interlinking case of "policy - futures - on-chain", also allowing the market to visually see how geopolitical events penetrate the risk-bearing capacity of specific funding accounts.

What truly makes the crypto market nervous is not this $10.14 million floating loss itself, but the concern over what kind of cross-commodity margin pressure will be detonated once this nominal scale of long positions, approximately $55.36 million, approaches the forced liquidation line, should the oil price scenario continue to slide unfavorable to longs. For traders managing commodities and crypto assets within the same funding pool, additional margin on the oil market often implies synchronous deleveraging of positions like BTC and ETH: from passive liquidations of perpetual contracts to active sell-offs of spot and options, all will be used to fill the margin black hole on the oil side, ultimately transforming a Middle Eastern ultimatum into substantial selling pressure and volatility amplification on BTC and ETH.

The Nature of BTC and ETH Under Oil Shock

When the fate of the Strait of Hormuz hangs in the balance over an ultimatum and oil and inflation expectations are simultaneously brought under the spotlight, the market must first label BTC: at this moment, is it "digital gold", or merely a high-beta chip oscillating with the Nasdaq and high-yield bonds? Historical experiences have provided contradictory samples - amidst multiple rounds of geopolitical conflicts, BTC sometimes rises with gold and other times syncs with the stock market in correction, indicating that its "safe haven" property is not absolute but depends on the current narrative: if traders are more concerned about rising inflation propelled by oil prices, BTC is likely to be purchased as a hedge against fiat currency purchasing power; conversely, if there are greater worries that central banks will be forced to tighten, compressing the duration and leverage of global risk assets, BTC may quickly revert to behaving as an extension of tech stocks and become one of the first risk budgets to be cut.

In contrast, ETH’s story has always been closer to “tech growth stocks + collateral”. Its returns are more strongly anchored in DeFi activity, on-chain TVL, and the overall sentiment of growth stocks, essentially relying more on loose liquidity and high risk appetite. When oil price shocks are interpreted as higher interest rates for a longer duration and a return of liquidity risk, ETH’s sensitivity to this macro variable often exceeds that of BTC: on one end, the value of on-chain collateral is directly influenced by price fluctuations, affecting the position of liquidation lines and DeFi leverage carrying capacity; on the other end, the "tech premium" itself is discounted under high-rate expectations; consequently, ETH can release greater beta in the face of the same macro shocks.

In such an oil shock environment, the crypto futures market becomes a magnifying glass. When macro uncertainty is amplified by oil prices, the funding rate, basis, and open interest tend to signal first: if the inflation hedge narrative prevails, perpetual BTC and futures basis may phase up, with funding costs skewed towards longs, while ETH, due to its higher growth and leveraged attributes, will see much more drastic fluctuations in basis and funding rates, potentially showing a "overshoot - pullback" spike structure in short-term annualization; conversely, if risk reduction becomes the dominant theme, both assets' long leverages will be simultaneously withdrawn, basis will compress, funding rates will turn negative, and the correlation between BTC and ETH, as well as with stocks, bonds, and oil, may swiftly converge from "divergence" to "crashing together", ultimately turning this oil price shock into a collective vote on whether BTC and ETH are hedging tools against inflation or high-beta chips.

Differentiation of MicroStrategy and Hut 8

On the day oil and interest rate expectations were stirred by Trump’s ultimatum, the traditional equity markets first provided a sample for “Bitcoin stocks”. Benchmark cut MicroStrategy's target price from $705 to $570, the reasons for which have not been made public, but the signal is clear enough: when macro conditions enter a high uncertainty zone, institutions begin to reprice their high-leverage BTC exposure. Over the years, MicroStrategy has relied on issuing bonds and ongoing financing to continually add to their BTC positions, transforming itself into an enlarged BTC long option; the high elasticity of its stock price to coin prices implies that a cut in the target price essentially communicates to the market - this model of "leveraging company balance sheets to bet on BTC" is now facing value contraction and needs to be toned down in an environment where oil prices, inflation, and geopolitical risks remain ambiguous.

In contrast is the different story told by Hut 8. It announced a lease contract related to AI data centers worth at least $9.8 billion, which saw its stock price surge by approximately 23% to 30% pre-market. The highlight here is not that it remains a mining enterprise, but rather the shift in narrative: from merely "mining BTC to earn coin price Beta" to "packaging data center, power, and operational capabilities as the computing infrastructure of the AI era." This implies that future cash flows will be intentionally diluted in correlation with BTC prices, with part of the revenue anchored in AI inference and training demand rather than block rewards and coin price cycles, leading capital to pay a higher premium for this cash flow structure associated with the macro tech cycle.

This differentiation in the equity market will, in turn, reshape the risk structure on-chain. The compression in MicroStrategy’s valuation reflects traditional capital suppressing the impulse to "use stocks as BTC leverage entry," marginally weakening the motivation to indirectly build BTC positions through U.S. stocks. Therefore, net inflows towards BTC spot would be negative, making it even harder for highly leveraged on-chain longs to claim that "institutions are still actively accumulating." In contrast, models like Hut 8’s turning towards AI data centers attract capital, indicating that mining companies will be more motivated to sell electricity and racks to AI rather than invest more electricity into the competition for computing power, which marginally limits the expansion of BTC network computing power and output, alleviating long-term miner selling pressure while raising the valuation and risk premiums of AI-related computing assets, ultimately pushing capital from a singular coin price Beta to a new situation of “BTC + AI Computing” viewed as parallel risk curves for pricing.

Pricing Code from Mining to AI

Hut 8’s announcement of at least $9.8 billion in AI data center contracts, which saw its pre-market stock price raised by 23% to 30%, acts as a clear markup for the revaluation of computing power; however, the true point at which the demand curve pivots is hinted at by what seems like a trivial Chrome event: Google Chrome was found to have silently pushed approximately 4GB of local AI model files "weights.bin" (Gemini Nano) to terminals without clearly informing users, triggering privacy and local resource allocation controversies. For price setters, the more crucial signal is this - tech giants have already implicitly accepted that browsers should "carry a model with users." To enable billions of terminals to possess local inference capabilities necessitates more frequent model training, version updates, and parameter deployments from the cloud, meaning both GPU and data center power are simultaneously leveraged on both the cloud and endpoint sides, pulling computing power entirely into the AI consumer goods era.

In this structure, the narratives of companies like Hut 8 are no longer merely "using electricity to mine BTC," but rather using the same electricity and racks to undertake long-term contracts for AI inference and training, partially rewriting assets that previously closely followed BTC fluctuations into computing infrastructure discounted against U.S. cash flows. Localizing and clouding AI models requires the same set of fundamentals: GPUs, data center capacity, and stable power, which are precisely the balance sheets earned through years of investment by traditional mining companies. The result is that the aggressive layouts of tech giants on the endpoint side resonate with mining companies’ transition towards AI data centers: the anchors for computing power prices and rack rental fees shift from "coin price + halvings" to "AI capital expenditures + user-side AI penetration rates," weakening the correlation between mining companies and BTC prices. Consequently, "computing stocks" begin to be priced as dual options of AI infrastructure and crypto.

For the BTC network itself, the mid-term impacts are more direct. The long-term rise in network difficulty and total computing power has increasingly made miners reliant on external financing and refined cost control; as GPUs, racks, and electricity become more expensive and volatile driven by AI demand, those miners who secure AI clients and can package their computing power to sell to data centers or tech giants can hedge mining cash flows with USD income, while marginal miners are more likely to be forced offline or to centralize sell-offs during phases of rising difficulty and electricity prices. The rhythm of miner selling pressure thus shifts from "linear selling of block rewards" to periodic rebalancing around energy and computing power rents. The supply side of BTC now resembles a complex option overlay of "oil prices and computing prices," while ETH correlates more intensely with tech growth stock sentiment and interest rate expectations, more easily resonating with the risk preferences of AI themes. The next round of valuation fluctuations for BTC and ETH will increasingly be shaped by these two curves.

Next Step: Watching the Strait of Hormuz and On-Chain Leverage

After Trump compressed the Middle Eastern situation into a binary gamble of "agreement or bombing," the real switch impacting macro pricing has shifted from Twitter to the Strait of Hormuz. If the ceasefire persists and shipping lanes stabilize, the risk premium of crude oil supply will decline, inflation expectations and fluctuations in energy will compress, the "war premium" and implied volatility accumulated in BTC and ETH during this event will gradually ease out, bringing the narrative closer to "normalization of risk assets"; conversely, should the ultimatum escalate into higher intensity bombings and further blockage of the Strait, the overall risk range for oil prices will shift upwards, raising concerns of renewed inflation, and funding may first deleverage across an overall basket labeled "high-beta tech + crypto," followed by differentiation based on whether BTC follows gold and ETH aligns with the Nasdaq, leading to distinctly different paths for the risk premiums of the two assets.

In this uncertain macro node, the trajectory of on-chain leverage will prove more honest than slogans. The considerable floating losses and partial liquidations of address 0xebe…14070 on crude contracts serve as a sample of how high-leverage accounts are passively exposed under geopolitical shocks; whether similar addresses continue to be forced to reduce positions or capitalize on "buying the dip" during each oil price pullback will directly affect whether energy-related capital can return to BTC and ETH. Meanwhile, several signals need to be closely monitored: first, whether large oil-related and crypto derivatives leveraged positions and whales are liquidating in sync; second, if BTC and ETH are converging towards "digital safe haven" in their rolling correlations with gold and Nasdaq, or have been reclassified as growth stocks; third, the reordering of crypto exposures within the traditional market - from MicroStrategy, whose target price was downgraded, to Hut 8, which surged due to its AI data center story, indicating that simply betting on coin price leverage versus leveraging computing power and infrastructure are now placed in different risk categories. On the trading layer, before the oil price and macro trajectories are solidified, a more reasonable approach is to use options to buy time and volatility, isolating long-term bullish bets from short-term shocks with maturity mismatches, and managing portfolio exposures through multi-asset hedging (for example, establishing hedging legs between BTC, ETH, gold, and stock indices based on real-time correlations), anchoring position decisions to key lines regarding the status of Hormuz passage, fluctuations in crude oil prices, the trajectories of large leveraged liquidations on-chain, and the correlation coefficients of BTC, ETH with gold and Nasdaq.

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