Bitcoin Passes Critical Stress Test Amid Oil Volatility

Tom Lee says Bitcoin’s rally during the oil boom coupled with Middle East tensions shows that the asset has passed an important stress test.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee said Bitcoin passed a major test after rallying over the weekend while oil prices rose due to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

According to him, the price action was a sign that the massive withdrawal from last October is finally behind the market, allowing Bitcoin to re-emerge as a reliable store of value.

Assumptions Cleared

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

“We had a bear market already in software, Mag-7 and crypto,” he said. “I think that already takes a lot of guesswork out of it.”

He also said he expects markets to close March on a positive note and possibly reach 5,300 on the S&P 500 later in the year. However, he warned that there could be a 20% drop at some point, which could be when markets stop responding to good news.

On Bitcoin specifically, Lee was specific. When pressed by Wapner on whether the OG cryptocurrency has failed as a safe haven, given that gold has outperformed during the recent market depression, Lee acknowledged the weakness but put it down as a product of extreme conditions.

“Bitcoin basically broke on October 10 because that was the biggest event in crypto history,” he said. “When gold goes up, Bitcoin goes down.”

But according to him, all that is in the past. “We’ve gone through a winter where a lot of speculation and energy has died down,” he said, pointing to the weekend’s price action as a turning point, with BTC holding up in the face of oil prices rising sharply as Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz.

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

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Where Bitcoin Stands Now

As of the time of this writing, Bitcoin was trading around $70,000, down only 0.2% in the last 24 hours after briefly touching $71,600 per CoinGecko data. In the past week, it’s up about 3% and is up about 7% in two weeks, though it’s down about 12% year-to-date and sits more than 44% below its October 2025 peak.

The picture from on-chain data is mixed, with Binance Research analysis showing around 29,000 BTC withdrawn from trading while the price was traded in the $65,000 to $75,000 range, a pattern that contradicts the previous sale from $92,000 to $62,000 when the exchange rates rose.