Bitcoin reversed from $73,968 as geopolitical risk interrupted its rally

Bitcoin’s U.S.-dollar market climbed to $73,968 on Coinbase Exchange on March 13, 2026, then surrendered most of the advance as geopolitical headlines interrupted a rally that had carried the asset to a near-one-month high.

The Coinbase BTC-USD daily candle closed at $70,944.33, which was $3,023.67, or 4.09%, below the session high. Yet the close remained $414.31, or 0.59%, above the $70,530.02 opening price. The combination matters: March 13 was a positive UTC session by the conventional open-to-close calculation, but that summary conceals a pronounced intraday reversal.

A wide session on one spot venue

Coinbase recorded a March 13 low of $70,398.01, producing a $3,569.99 high-to-low range. That range equaled 5.06% of the opening price. Reported volume for the candle was 12,304.21633821 BTC.

These measurements apply only to Coinbase Exchange’s BTC-USD spot pair during the UTC day beginning at 00:00 on March 13. Cryptocurrency trades continuously across separate order books, without a consolidated tape or universal closing auction. Prices, volumes and daily returns can therefore differ by exchange and timezone.

Coinbase’s documentation also warns that its historical candle service may omit intervals containing no ticks. The substantial reported activity makes an empty-interval problem unlikely for this daily bucket, but the data still should not be interpreted as total worldwide bitcoin turnover.

Relief gave way to renewed risk

At 10:35 a.m. Eastern, CoinDesk observed bitcoin near $73,800 and described it as almost 5% higher over its preceding 24-hour window. The publication connected the advance to falling oil prices and comments made on March 12 by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about efforts to restrain energy costs. It placed West Texas Intermediate crude near $94.50 per barrel, below a reported March 12 high approaching $98.

Those figures were contemporaneous point-in-time observations, not Coinbase daily-candle values. They establish how the rally was understood during the morning but do not prove that oil alone caused it.

By 12:30 p.m. Eastern, CoinDesk recorded bitcoin near $71,200 after a roughly 3.5% reversal from the high. Its report connected the change in risk appetite to news of additional U.S. military deployments to the Middle East and developments surrounding a U.S. refueling-aircraft loss in Iraq. The publication said the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had also turned from gains to losses while oil recovered to approximately $97.30.

The sequencing is important. That market reversal was documented hours before the United States publicly disclosed its strike on Iran’s Kharg Island later on March 13. U.S. Central Command subsequently said its forces struck more than 90 military targets on the island while preserving its oil infrastructure. The Coinbase UTC candle ended at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, after the strike disclosure, but a daily candle cannot isolate how much of the closing price reflected that later development.

What March 13 established

The evidence supports a narrow conclusion: bitcoin briefly reached a near-one-month high on Coinbase, reversed 4.09% from that high and nevertheless closed its UTC session 0.59% above the open. It was a whipsaw rather than an unambiguous daily loss.

The record does not establish that bitcoin had become either a geopolitical safe haven or a conventional risk asset. Nor can it allocate the reversal among military news, oil prices, derivatives positioning, profit-taking or exchange-specific order flow. March 13 instead demonstrated how quickly a continuously traded crypto market could move from relief to caution as macroeconomic and geopolitical expectations changed within one session.