Bitcoin sank below $61,000 as Iran’s attack jolted weekend crypto trading

Bitcoin fell below $61,000 on April 13, 2024 as Iran launched missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles toward Israel, turning the continuously traded cryptocurrency market into an early measure of investor anxiety while most traditional financial venues were closed.

Coinbase Exchange data for the BTC-USD spot pair show an April 13 UTC opening price of $67,148.62, a session high of $69,100, a low of $60,822.01 and a closing price of $63,745.50. That represents a 5.07% decline from the UTC open to close and an 11.98% peak-to-trough drawdown. Those percentages are Coinburn calculations from Coinbase’s hourly candles, not exchange-supplied performance figures.

A contemporaneous Reuters market report captured the violence of the move at an earlier point in the session. At 21:00 GMT, Reuters recorded bitcoin at $61,842, down 7.9% and $5,308 from its previous close. Reuters also placed ether at $2,930, down 9.18% under the same previous-close convention.

A geopolitical shock met a round-the-clock market

The market decline coincided with confirmation of a direct Iranian attack on Israel. In a statement dated April 13, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said American forces had intercepted dozens of missiles and unmanned aircraft traveling toward Israel after launches from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Austin characterized the attacks as unprecedented and called for de-escalation.

The timing mattered for market structure. April 13 was a Saturday, so major U.S. stock and government-bond venues were closed. Bitcoin and other digital assets continued trading globally, allowing prices to react immediately to reports and official statements. That did not make crypto a definitive forecast for the next traditional-market session, but it did expose how traders were repricing a sudden escalation before those markets reopened.

The decline was not confined to bitcoin. Coinbase’s ETH-USD candles show ether opening April 13 UTC at $3,238.98, reaching a high of $3,302.32, falling as low as $2,850 and closing at $2,970.68. The open-to-close loss was 8.28%, while the high-to-low decline was 13.70%, again using Coinburn calculations from the Coinbase series.

What the tape established—and what it did not

The synchronized declines support an interpretation of broad risk reduction rather than an isolated bitcoin-specific technical event. They also challenged, for this episode, the claim that bitcoin would necessarily trade as a geopolitical haven. A single session cannot settle that larger question: digital assets may respond differently across conflicts, liquidity conditions and measurement windows.

Nor does temporal alignment prove that every sale resulted from the attack. Bitcoin had already been volatile before the confirmed launches, and the April 13 candle incorporates trading across a full UTC day. Interest-rate expectations, positioning, approaching protocol-supply changes and routine weekend liquidity could also have affected the move. Public candle data do not identify trader motives or distinguish discretionary selling from forced liquidations.

The price figures also describe Coinbase’s U.S.-dollar spot market, not a consolidated global benchmark. Other exchanges could record different highs, lows and closing conventions. Reuters’ 21:00 GMT snapshot and previous-close comparison therefore should not be treated as interchangeable with Coinbase’s complete UTC-session return.

What can be said firmly is narrower and still significant: on April 13, 2024, a verified geopolitical escalation was accompanied by a fast, market-wide cryptocurrency selloff. With conventional venues shut, bitcoin’s uninterrupted trading made the digital-asset market one of the first liquid arenas in which the shock became visible.