Bitcoin Is Rising During War… Here’s Why w/ Max Gokhman
Summary
- Bitcoin is demonstrating safe-haven characteristics, decoupling from traditional risk assets as capital flees geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East.
- The stablecoin market has surpassed $300 billion, acting as the primary on-ramp ("casino chips") for investors seeking refuge from fiat volatility without taking on native crypto price risk.
- On-chain derivatives platforms are capturing significant real-world asset volume (e.g., 3-4% of global silver trade) because they offer 24/7 price discovery during weekend geopolitical events when traditional markets are closed.
- Institutional portfolio construction in crypto is shifting toward a TradFi "core and satellite" model, utilizing major Layer-1s as the core and Layer-2s/gaming/AI tokens as high-upside satellites.
- The future of on-chain activity will be heavily driven by AI agents acting as autonomous economic actors that transact, invest, and even launch their own tokens.
Trade Ideas
"Things that are worse for the dollar are going to be good for digital assets especially digital assets that can be used as transactional rails like Salana and Ripple." As geopolitical instability rises and confidence in the US dollar wanes in certain regions, capital in conflict zones actively seeks alternative, non-sovereign payment rails. Networks specifically designed for high-speed, low-cost cross-border transactions will capture this capital flight and see a surge in network utility and fee generation. LONG established transactional rail tokens serving as direct alternatives to traditional fiat payment systems. Fiat-backed stablecoins (like USDC or USDT) may capture the vast majority of this transactional volume, leaving the native network tokens with minimal value accrual.
"If you want to trade like I guess oil futures or oil derivatives you can do that all weekend long if you want on a place like hyperlquid... 3 or 4% of the global volume of silver trade was on hyperlquid." Traditional financial markets close on weekends, leaving traders paralyzed and unable to hedge or react to major geopolitical events (like weekend military strikes). Decentralized perpetual exchanges solve this by offering 24/7 price discovery and liquidity, meaning they will inevitably siphon massive trading volume and market share away from legacy derivative exchanges. LONG decentralized perpetual exchanges that are successfully listing real-world assets and commodities. Aggressive regulatory crackdowns by the CFTC or SEC against unlicensed on-chain derivative platforms offering commodities to US retail traders.
"I would have the same concept of like L1 as a core, maybe a couple different L1s as cores. These are the really the main networks that I have high confidence in. And then I create satellites of the L2s that are more risky." Institutions are moving away from treating all crypto as a single, highly correlated monolith. By applying traditional portfolio construction frameworks (core-satellite) to digital assets, major Layer-1 networks will receive the bulk of sticky, institutional "core" allocations, driving sustained capital inflows and reducing their historical volatility. LONG major Layer-1 networks as foundational, institutional-grade portfolio assets. A failure of institutional adoption to materialize at scale, or severe macroeconomic shocks that force institutions to liquidate their core crypto holdings.
Up Next
This Milk Road Daily video, published March 10, 2026, features Max Gokhman, LG Doucet discussing XRP, HYPE, BTC, ETH, SOL. 3 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Max Gokhman, LG Doucet · Tickers: XRP, HYPE, BTC, ETH, SOL