Bitunix Analyst:Ceasefire Expectations Lower Hedging Premium,but Sanctions and Shipping Restrictions Simultaneously Expand,Market Enters Mismatched Phase of"Surface Easing,Internal Contraction"
BlockBeats News, April 17th. the market has begun to reprice not「whether war exists,」but「the form of war.」The U.S. and Iran have shifted from pursuing a comprehensive agreement to a temporary framework, with increasing ceasefire signals. On the surface, this reduces tail risks of extreme supply disruptions, leading to a decline in USD safe-haven demand and a rebound in risk assets.
However, at the same time, the U.S. has expanded restrictions on Iran』s shipping and energy sectors, extending controls to crude oil, refined products, and industrial metals. This indicates that real supply-side constraints have not been removed, but have instead become more structural.
This mismatch between「easing expectations vs. physical tightening」is distorting market pricing. Energy markets have not experienced actual loosening, yet the USD has weakened due to improving risk sentiment, creating a typical asset misalignment: safe-haven assets are pricing in optimistic scenarios, while commodities continue to reflect constrained supply. This also explains why Wall Street has broadly turned bearish on the USD—not due to fundamental deterioration, but as a result of capital rebalancing away from wartime positioning into risk assets.
A deeper shift is occurring in policy and capital structure. The Federal Reserve maintains a cautious or even hawkish tone, while market pricing for rate cuts remains highly compressed, indicating that policy expectations have not truly shifted toward easing. Meanwhile, warnings from a former Treasury Secretary regarding U.S. Treasury demand, combined with persistently high long-end yields, suggest that global confidence in「risk-free assets」is beginning to erode at the margin. This further weakens the structural support for the USD, making it more sensitive to swings in risk sentiment.
In the crypto market, BTC is currently in a typical liquidity redistribution phase. Price has repeatedly tested the supply zone above 75,000 but failed to hold, corresponding to persistent high-density liquidation and trapped positions near 76,000. On the downside, the 72,000–73,000 range has formed a clear liquidity support zone, indicating that capital has not exited but is instead reallocating within the range at higher frequency.
From the liquidation heatmap, the market is building a new equilibrium zone rather than extending a one-sided trend.
Overall, the market has transitioned from「event-driven」to「structural mismatch-driven.」Short-term price movements will be increasingly determined by how capital reallocates among safe-haven assets, energy commodities, and risk assets, rather than by any single macro event. The key question is no longer whether the conflict ends, but when supply constraints and liquidity conditions realign.
