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US-Iran Negotiations Collapse, Bitcoin Faces Battle to Defend $70,000 Level
Original Title: "US-Iran Negotiations Collapse, Bitcoin Defends $70,000 Level"
Original Author: Mah, Foresight News
A major rebound in the crypto market is still a distant prospect. On April 13, the price of BTC hovered around $71,000, falling about 2.6% in 24 hours, while ETH performed even weaker, dropping 3.63% to around $2,200. Bitcoin's market dominance remains at 58.8%, and the overall trading volume of the entire crypto sector has not significantly increased.
Coinglass data shows that in the past 24 hours, the total amount of liquidations across the network was $284 million, with long liquidations totaling $203 million. At the same time, CoinMarketCap's Fear and Greed Index currently stands at 43, indicating a neutral market sentiment.
The traditional financial markets are also experiencing significant volatility. Influenced by the Middle East situation, international oil prices remain high, with Brent crude oil once approaching $107 per barrel, a significant increase from pre-conflict levels. As for the US stock market, the S&P 500 fell by about 5% in March, marking one of the worst monthly performances in recent years; international stock markets faced greater declines due to energy import pressures and a stronger dollar. Bond yields are rising, inflation expectations are reignited, and investors are rapidly switching between risk assets, driving up demand for safe havens such as gold. This cross-market interdependence once again confirms that crypto, as a high-beta risk asset, is synchronously facing dual macro and geopolitical shocks.
US-Iran Negotiations Collapse
One of the core drivers of the crypto market's sluggishness this week was the sharp escalation of US-Iran tensions. The face-to-face peace talks between the US and Iran held in Islamabad, Pakistan on April 11-12 lasted for over 20 hours, ultimately ending in failure.
Vice President Pence and the Iranian delegation failed to reach a consensus on key issues, including Iran's abandonment of its nuclear weapons program and the "red line" of ceasing uranium enrichment. The Iranian side accused the US of "maximalism" and "constantly changing goals."
Pence boarding Air Force Two as he leaves Islamabad
Following the collapse of the negotiations, US President Trump announced on social media on Sunday that the US military would immediately initiate a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) later confirmed that at 10 p.m. on April 13 (Beijing time), the blockade would target all ships entering and exiting Iranian ports, but would not impede normal transit of non-Iranian ports. The Iranian Foreign Minister and military quickly responded, warning that any military vessels approaching the strait would be deemed a violation of the ceasefire and reserving the right to retaliate.
The Strait of Hormuz is a key chokepoint for global oil transportation, handling about 20% of global oil shipments. If a blockage persists, the risk of supply chain disruption will directly push up oil prices, further fueling concerns of global inflation and slowing economic growth expectations.
This geopolitical black swan event has the most direct impact on risk assets: Investors are withdrawing from high-beta assets, turning to cash or gold. BTC, as "digital gold," saw its safe-haven properties suppressed in the short term by risk aversion sentiment, unable to fulfill its hedging role. In past similar Middle East crises, the crypto market has often reacted ahead of traditional markets, experiencing a sharp pullback, which is a direct reflection of the current downturn.
Polymarket's latest data shows that the probability of the U.S. and Iran reaching a permanent peace agreement by May 31st of this year is 27%, while the probability of reaching an agreement by the 30th of this month has dropped to 14%.
However, the future U.S.-Iran negotiations are still fraught with uncertainty.
According to The Wall Street Journal, informed officials revealed that after the marathon-style peace talks held in Islamabad failed to reach an agreement, countries in the Middle East are actively pushing for the U.S. and Iran to return to the negotiating table.
Although both the U.S. and Iran have issued strong statements, the diplomatic door remains open, and the second round of negotiations could take place within a few days. Countries in the region are negotiating with the U.S. to ensure the extension of a two-week and very fragile ceasefire.
The Fed May Only Cut Interest Rates Once This Year
Another key suppression factor comes from the monetary policy side. The minutes of the Fed's March meeting showed that despite the high uncertainty brought by the Iran conflict, policymakers still maintain the expectation of only one interest rate cut in 2026.
On April 10th, CPI data was released, with the U.S. March non-seasonally adjusted CPI year-on-year rate at 3.3%, the highest since May 2024, in line with the market's expectation of 3.3%, up from the previous value of 2.40%. The U.S. March seasonally adjusted CPI monthly rate recorded 0.9%, the highest since June 2022, in line with market expectations. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that the record rise in gasoline prices accounted for nearly three-quarters of the month's CPI increase. Another index that excludes food and energy costs showed a slowdown in the month-on-month increase to 0.2%.
The market was originally hoping for a more aggressive easing cycle to boost risk assets, but the oil price shock has made the Fed's "data-dependent" strategy more conservative. Higher energy costs may delay the path to falling inflation, thereby delaying the timing of interest rate cuts.
This is undoubtedly a double whammy for the highly liquidity-dependent crypto market. Historically, dashed rate cut expectations have often coincided with risk asset revaluations, with BTC's current consolidation around $71,000 reflecting a macro expectation adjustment.
Currently, the latest data on Polymarket shows that the market is betting a mere 26% probability on one 25-basis-point Fed rate cut this year, while the hold steady probability has risen to 44%.
Tightening market liquidity casts a shadow over the crypto market's rebound.
Profit Taking Suppresses BTC Price Rebound
On-chain data metrics truly reveal the true intentions of crypto players' maneuvers. Glassnode data shows that any attempt to reach the $70,000 to $80,000 range faces liquidity shortages and profit-taking pressure, limiting the magnitude of the rebound.
Another rally above $70,000 ran out of steam due to hourly profit-taking of over $20 million.
Perhaps to some sellers, this BTC rebound is only a phase and not a reversal.
Currently, when the BTC price is at $70,800, approximately 13.5 million addresses are in a loss position.
This indicates that a considerable portion of users in the network bought Bitcoin at a price higher than the current spot price.
Subsequent Market Trends
Despite short-term pressures, senior figures in the crypto industry remain largely optimistic about the long-term structural outlook.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor suggests that Bitcoin likely bottomed out around $60,000 in early February, with forced-out sellers already purged from the market. The bottom is more defined by seller exhaustion rather than valuation determinants.
He believes the current selling pressure is limited, ETF fund inflows are absorbing daily supply, and corporate treasury asset allocation to Bitcoin is driving sustained demand. Michael Saylor predicts that the next bull market catalyst will be the establishment of a banking credit and digital lending system built on Bitcoin, transforming Bitcoin from a non-yielding asset to a capital market engine.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes previously stated at the end of March, "The current market is rife with hopium about a favorable future. While I certainly hope the carnage will end, I will not be buying risky assets here."
Tom Lee posted indicating that there are increasing signs that the "bottom is in," although overall market sentiment remains skeptical. If you are still skeptical, you may want to consider buying assets that have outperformed during the US-Iran conflict.
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The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.
There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
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After the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, when will the war end?
Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions
The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.
There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.
App