Oil Hits $100, Gold Records, Crypto Holds Steady

Oil crossed $100. That sentence alone captures the week. The Iran-US conflict escalated from airstrikes to direct infrastructure attacks — Iranian missiles hit an Israeli refinery city, a Kuwaiti oil tanker caught fire in Dubai port, and a US radar jet was destroyed at a Saudi base. Trump extended his Strait of Hormuz reopening deadline to April 6, but Iran’s parliament denied any talks had occurred. Meanwhile, equities posted their worst week since May 2022 with the S&P 500 dropping over 3%. Gold sprinted past $4,500 to fresh all-time highs. And crypto? Crypto held up better than stocks for the second straight week, with BTC exchange supply hitting multi-year lows even as the Fear & Greed index cratered to 11.

Markets scoreboard

The numbers tell a clean story: everything sold off except oil and gold. The S&P 500 fell for a fifth consecutive week — its longest losing streak since the 2022 bear market. Oil’s 10% weekly gain was its sharpest since the initial Iranian strikes in February. The yield curve steepened again: the 2-year rallied on flight-to-safety flows while the 10-year and 30-year climbed on inflation expectations. That combination — short rates compressing while long rates rise — is the textbook stagflation signal that keeps showing up in this data.

Crypto told a more nuanced story than the headline numbers suggest. Yes, BTC dropped 6.5%, but equities fell harder on a risk-adjusted basis. ETH had rallied 20% in the eight days prior on institutional staking products, so some pullback was expected. Exchange balances continued dropping to multi-year lows, and retail small wallets were accumulating aggressively even as the Fear & Greed index touched 11 — a reading historically associated with local bottoms.

Top stories

Iran conflict enters infrastructure phase

The war crossed from military targets to economic ones this week. Iran’s IRGC closed the Strait of Hormuz to US and Israeli-linked vessels, fired missiles at Haifa near Israel’s Bazan oil refinery, and struck a US base in Saudi Arabia. Israel responded by hitting central Tehran and claiming to have killed an IRGC Navy commander. On the diplomatic side, Trump issued a 15-point peace plan that Iran flatly rejected as a 48-hour deadline expired. He extended the Hormuz ultimatum to April 6 and paused US strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days.

The human cost continued climbing: over 1,900 dead in Iran, 1,100 in Lebanon, and 13 US service members killed. The IEA released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, but it barely moved the needle — Brent crude topped $116 before settling near $110 by Friday. The April 6 deadline is now the single most important date on the macro calendar.

Meta and Google face addiction liability

A landmark trial found Meta and Google liable for social media addiction in minors, awarding $3 million in initial damages with a punitive phase still ahead. This is a bellwether case: roughly 2,000 similar lawsuits are pending. In a separate action, a New Mexico court hit Meta with a $375 million judgment for failing to protect children from online predators. The combined legal exposure could reshape how social platforms operate in the US and create compliance costs that smaller competitors can’t absorb.

Anthropic takes enterprise market share from OpenAI

Ramp spending data showed Anthropic capturing 73% of first-time enterprise AI purchases, a sharp reversal from OpenAI’s dominance just six months ago. The shift accelerated after the Pentagon cut ties with Anthropic over its refusal to support autonomous weapons and mass surveillance programs — a decision that cost the company government contracts but apparently boosted private-sector trust. Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G at a $380 billion valuation, with notable crossover: more than 12 investors from OpenAI’s cap table also backed the round.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT uninstall rates surged 295% in a single day following the Pentagon news, while Claude topped app store charts. The AI industry’s emerging split — government-aligned vs. commercial-trust-focused — is becoming a real competitive axis.

Signal group chat leaks Yemen war plans

A massive national security breach revealed that senior officials including NSC’s Waltz, Defense Secretary Hegseth, and VP Vance had been sharing classified Yemen strike plans in a Signal group chat. The leak dominated news cycles and raised fresh questions about operational security at the highest levels of the Trump administration.

AI and tech

Funding continued at an absurd pace. AMI Labs — Yann LeCun’s venture for “world models” beyond text LLMs — raised a $1.03 billion seed round at $3.5 billion, making it Europe’s largest seed ever. Bezos Expeditions backed the deal. Apple acquired Israeli AI startup Q.AI for roughly $2 billion, its second-largest acquisition ever. OpenAI pushed toward a $100 billion raise at a valuation nearing $1 trillion. And in a quieter move, Nvidia said it would halt investments in both OpenAI and Anthropic ahead of their 2026 IPOs — a hedge that signals the chip giant doesn’t want to pick sides.

The memory chip sector sold off hard after Google published research on a memory architecture breakthrough that could reduce dependence on traditional DRAM. SK Hynix and Samsung both extended their declines.

On the model front, Anthropic teased Claude 4 with a hybrid architecture that lets developers control a compute slider between standard and deep reasoning — a different design than OpenAI’s fixed thinking tiers. Enterprise-focused, optimized for software engineering, expected within weeks.

Crypto and DeFi

The SEC had a busy week. It approved Nasdaq’s proposal for blockchain-based stock and ETF settlement, and separately classified Litecoin as a commodity. A deadline on 91 pending crypto ETF applications covering 24 tokens passed on Friday — the results should trickle out in coming days and could be a significant catalyst either way.

Tether led a $7.5 million seed for Utexo, a project building native USDT on Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. Coinbase launched 24/7 perpetual futures on stocks like Apple and Nvidia for non-US users — another step in blurring the line between crypto and traditional brokerage. And on the darker side, Binance delisted four altcoins (FORTH, SXP, NTRN, HOOK), rattling small-cap sentiment and reinforcing the rotation toward large-cap liquid assets.

Token unlocks added selling pressure throughout the week, with PARTI releasing 19.86% of its float and several more unlocks queued for early April — SUI ($47.5M), EDGE ($16.6M), and ENA ($8.81M) among them.

Geopolitics and macro

The Fed stayed on hold at 3.50-3.75% from its March 18 meeting, but the market’s rate expectations shifted dramatically. With oil above $100, core PCE revised up to 2.7%, and tariffs adding an estimated 0.5-0.75 percentage points to inflation, traders now price zero cuts for 2026. Some corners of the market have started pricing in a potential hike — the probability of a rate increase by April reached 12%, up from zero at the start of March.

Yields tell the story. The 2-year jumped 43 basis points in March alone, from 3.47% to 3.90%. The 10-year hit 4.44%. With the 30-year pushing toward 5%, mortgage rates are drifting back toward 7%, adding another headwind to a housing market that was already struggling. Fed Vice Chair Jefferson called the energy pass-through to core inflation “modest so far,” but that qualifier — “so far” — is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

On the geopolitical map beyond Iran: Russia and Ukraine agreed to a Black Sea naval ceasefire and energy infrastructure halt, mediated through US-Saudi channels. Trump announced 25% tariffs on any country importing Venezuelan oil, a threat aimed squarely at China (which buys 68% of Venezuela’s exports). And Israel expanded its ground offensive into southern Lebanon, opening a full second front against Hezbollah.

Quick hits

• Netflix raised all subscription prices by $1+ across tiers
• Corebridge and Equitable announced a $22 billion all-stock merger
• KB Home missed earnings estimates; housing sector under pressure from rising rates
• On Holding surged 25% on strong results
• New Zealand began preparing fuel shortage contingency plans due to war disruptions
• Thailand ended fuel subsidies as the prolonged conflict drove energy costs beyond what the government could absorb
• TSA pay crisis: Trump issued an emergency order using prior DHS funds to pay unpaid agents
• USPS: Postmaster DeJoy resigned after a DOGE deal to cut 10,000 workers

What to watch next week

April 6 Hormuz deadline — The single biggest catalyst on the calendar. If the Strait reopens or a deal framework emerges, oil crashes to the $80s and risk assets rip. If the deadline passes without progress, expect WTI to push toward $110+ and equities to test new lows.

March jobs report — Labor market data lands this week. The Fed needs the job market to hold up while it waits out inflation, so any surprise weakness could shift rate expectations quickly.

SEC ETF decisions — 91 crypto ETF applications covering 24 tokens are pending. Approvals would expand institutional access significantly; rejections could pressure an already skittish altcoin market.

Clarity Act — Senators are expected to release the final version of crypto regulatory legislation. The framework has been stalled for months, and the market has largely stopped pricing in regulatory upside, which means a positive surprise could matter.

Consumer confidence and JOLTS — Two data points that measure whether the consumer is cracking under $100 oil and 7% mortgages, or holding firm.

Sources

1. Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) — S&P 500
2. CoinGecko — Bitcoin Price
3. Kitco — Gold Price
4. FRED — WTI Crude Oil
5. FRED — Treasury Yields
6. Reuters — Iran-US Conflict
7. TechCrunch — Anthropic Series G
8. TechCrunch — AMI Labs Seed Round
9. Ramp — Enterprise AI Spending Data
10. SEC — Nasdaq Blockchain Settlement
11. CoinDesk — Tether/Utexo
12. The Information — Nvidia AI Investment Halt