Global equities and risk assets such as bitcoin took a hit Tuesday as Iran launched missiles on key Israeli locations, with the latter threatening retaliation in the coming days.

(Eduardo Castro/Pixabay)

• Tensions in the Middle East pushed down BTC during the first half of Asia trading hours Wednesday.

• The CoinDesk 20, a measure of the most liquid digital assets, had its worst drop in weeks.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose above $61,500 in Asian morning hours Wednesday after sliding to as low as $60,300 late Tuesday as a Middle East conflict grows, denting hopes for a rally in the asset’s historically most bullish month.

Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, threatening a fresh round of attacks as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate. The strike was in response to Israel first carrying out a series of attacks on Lebanon in the past weeks.

BTC fell the most in over a month, while gold rose, with the drop reaching 6% at one point and 24-hour losses at 3.5%. That was the worst start for the asset’s historically most bullish month, Presto Research traders wrote in a note Wednesday.

Polymarket bettors are giving a 49% chance that Israel will retaliate against Iran by the end of the week.

“Historically, October has been a strong month for BTC with only two losing years out of the last 11,” Presto said. It pointed out gold’s outperformance in the past 24 hours as a measure of the different maturity levels of both assets.

“Last night’s BTC price action (BTC -4% vs. gold +0.8%) in the aftermath of Iran’s attack in May puzzling, esp. considering BlackRock’s recent pitch for BTC as a risk-off asset similar to gold,” researchers led by Peter Chung wrote. “The reality is that the difference in these two assets’ short-term price actions reflects their different maturity phases.”

The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) fell 4.7%, its worst drop in recent weeks.

“Gold is a much more mature asset, with a 5,000 year history as a store of value, so there’s not much room left for incremental network effects. BTC, on the other hand, shares the same attributes that make gold a good store of value (better in many cases), but with only 15 15-year history. This means it’s in the early stages of mainstream adoption, and its narrative is still poorly understood,” they added.

Dogecoin (DOGE) led losses among major tokens with an 8% haircut over the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows, with XRP (XRP), Solana’s SOL, BNB Chain’s BNB and ether (ETH) losing as much as 6%.

Smaller tokens with a market cap under $2 billion fared worst, with Sei Network’s SEI, memecoin floki (FLOKI) and Starknet’s STARK falling as much as 16%.