Markets got hit from both sides on Thursday. Geopolitical saber-rattling pushed oil to $88 a barrel, and then a brutal jobs report kicked risk assets while they were already down.
Bitcoin dropped 3.7% in 24 hours to around $69K. Ethereum fared worse, sliding 4.2% to slip below the psychologically important $2K level. Solana took the hardest punch among major tokens, falling 5% to roughly $85. The crypto Fear & Greed Index now sits at 18 — deep in “Extreme Fear” territory, barely improved from last week’s 13.
The geopolitical trigger
Former President Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran must accept “unconditional surrender.” Those two words sent oil traders scrambling.
West Texas Intermediate crude jumped to $88 per barrel as the market priced in potential disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes daily. Think of it as the global economy’s jugular vein, and someone just waved a knife near it.
An $88 oil price isn’t catastrophic by historical standards. Crude topped $120 in June 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But direction matters more than absolute level. When oil spikes suddenly on geopolitical risk rather than demand strength, it functions as a tax on consumers and a headwind for corporate margins simultaneously.
Higher energy costs feed directly into inflation expectations. And inflation expectations are the one thing the Federal Reserve absolutely does not want moving in the wrong direction right now.
A jobs report nobody wanted
If the oil shock was the left hook, the employment data was the right cross.
The US economy shed 92,000 jobs last month. Wall Street had expected a gain of 59,000. That’s not just a miss — it’s a 151,000 swing in the wrong direction. In English: economists predicted modest hiring, and instead got significant layoffs.
To put that gap in context, a miss of this magnitude is relatively rare outside of recession periods. The last time payrolls came in more than 150,000 below consensus was during the initial COVID shock in early 2020. This isn’t that, but the comparison isn’t exactly comforting either.
The combination is particularly toxic for markets. Rising oil prices suggest inflation pressures are building, which argues against rate cuts. Falling employment suggests the economy is weakening, which argues for rate cuts. The Fed can’t easily address both problems at once. That’s the textbook definition of a stagflationary signal, and it’s the macro scenario that gives portfolio managers nightmares.
Crypto’s correlation problem
Bitcoin was supposed to be the uncorrelated asset. The digital gold. The hedge against exactly this kind of macro chaos.
Instead, BTC fell in lockstep with equities. Again. The correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 has been stubbornly persistent throughout 2024 and into 2025. When institutional money dominates crypto flows — through spot ETFs, treasury allocations, and prime brokerage desks — the asset class behaves like a high-beta tech stock, not a safe haven.
The damage was spread broadly across the crypto market. XRP settled around $1.36, and even the broader altcoin landscape showed deep red. The one notable exception: US Treasury-backed stablecoins, which posted a 28.9% gain over the past seven days as capital rotated aggressively into the safest possible on-chain parking spot. When stablecoins are your best-performing category, the market is essentially telling you it wants to sit this one out.
There’s a silver lining buried in the weekly data, though. Bitcoin is still up 4% over the past seven days despite Thursday’s selloff. That suggests the broader trend hadn’t fully reversed — at least not yet. Whether that weekly gain survives another session or two of risk-off trading is the key question.
What this means for investors
The immediate risk is a feedback loop. Higher oil prices erode consumer spending power, which weakens employment further, which reduces spending again. If Friday brings more hawkish commentary from Fed officials responding to the inflation signal while ignoring the jobs weakness, expect another leg down in risk assets.
For crypto specifically, the $69K level for Bitcoin is worth watching closely. It sits near the previous cycle’s all-time high from November 2021, which many technical analysts view as a major support zone. A sustained break below $67K would likely trigger a cascade of leveraged liquidations and could send BTC toward the mid-$60K range.
Ethereum below $2K is similarly precarious. That level has been a battleground multiple times in 2025, and each test weakens buyer conviction. Solana at $85 is trading well below its 2024 highs and approaching levels that could shake out the remaining momentum traders.
The Fear & Greed Index at 18 does offer one contrarian signal. Historically, readings below 20 have preceded meaningful rallies — not immediately, but within weeks. Extreme fear tends to mark zones of capitulation where weak hands exit and patient capital accumulates. The caveat is that this only works if the macro backdrop stabilizes. A Fear & Greed reading of 18 during a genuine stagflationary episode could easily become a 10.
Investors should monitor three things in the coming days: whether oil continues climbing toward $90 and beyond, whether the next round of economic data confirms or contradicts the jobs weakness, and whether Bitcoin can hold its weekly gains. Two out of three going the wrong way would significantly raise the probability of a broader correction.
Bottom line: Geopolitical risk and economic weakness arriving simultaneously is the macro cocktail that markets hate most. Crypto proved once again that it trades as a risk asset during stress events, not a hedge against them. The Fear & Greed Index screaming “Extreme Fear” could be a buying signal or a warning — and which one depends entirely on whether the next few data points suggest this is a bad week or the start of something worse.
