Asset manager Bitwise has interpreted the recent strength in bitcoin as a direct beneficiary of geopolitical instability, and said $1 million could become a long-term baseline price.

On April 14, blockchain outlet The Block Crypto reported that Matt Hougan (맷 호건), Bitwise's chief investment officer, and Ryan Rasmussen (라이언 라스무센), head of Bitwise research, said bitcoin did not move against risk-off phases. They argued it rose because of such phases.

The two pointed to bitcoin rising 12 percent after U.S. and Israeli air strikes began on Feb. 28, while the S&P 500 fell 1 percent and gold dropped 10 percent. They said the moves differed from the prevailing view that bitcoin should weaken like a high-risk asset when geopolitical shocks intensify.

Bitwise described this as "chaos is a ladder." It said that as cracks widen in the global financial system, demand revives for neutral, non-sovereign money, and the benefit is flowing into bitcoin.

They also described bitcoin as having a structure that contains two bets within a single asset. One is a store of value that competes with gold, and the other is the possibility of being used as a settlement currency in international trade. Bitwise said the market has so far seen the second scenario as unlikely, but it assessed that its plausibility has recently increased.

Bitwise cited the weaponisation of financial infrastructure as a backdrop to the shift. It said trade flows began moving toward China-led alternative systems after Russia was excluded from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, payment network in 2022, and that the dollar's influence is weakening as a result. It said this trend is widening space for non-dollar payment networks.

It also pointed to recent developments in the Middle East as a case that makes this direction clearer. A key example was that Iran showed willingness to accept bitcoin as payment for passage fees in the Strait of Hormuz. It said sanctions remain in place and blockchain features limit illegal use, but that the signal itself matters that countries have begun testing non-political alternatives to bypass the existing financial system.

Bitwise compared bitcoin's potential use as a currency to an option. It said it has not yet been fully reflected in prices, but it is similar to an out-of-the-money call option whose value grows as the probability of adoption rises and global volatility increases. It said both conditions are now strengthening at the same time, meaning bitcoin's valuation framework itself could change.

Bitwise said bitcoin's role is also changing. It said it could increasingly function not as a speculative asset that relies on a liquidity-driven market, but as an asset that hedges geopolitical disorder. Bitwise said that if bitcoin absorbs not only store-of-value demand but also part of global transaction flows, current long-term price targets do not fully reflect its potential. It presented a scenario in which $1 million could become not a ceiling but a "baseline."

With military tensions in the Middle East and stubborn U.S. inflation continuing, the market is showing a trend of reassessing whether bitcoin is a risk asset or a new form of geopolitical hedging asset.