Morning Minute: Bitcoin Outperforms Gold, Stocks During Iran War

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes or less, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall ahead of CPI this morning; BTC at $70.6k
• Saylor’s STRC sets another smashing record, enough to buy 2,038 BTC
• Polymarket taps Palantir to police sports markets
• Hyperliquid adds portfolio margin and prediction markets with HIP-4
• Elon’s X Money set to debut next month (no mention of DOGE/crypto)

₿ Bitcoin Has Outperformed Gold and Stocks Since the Iran War Began

Bitcoin sold off hard when the Iran conflict first hit markets, dropping to roughly $63,000 as traders dumped risk assets across the board.

It has since climbed back over $70,000 (+7%), and over that stretch it has outperformed gold (-1%), stocks (S&P -1%) and tech (QQQ +1%).

Certainly Saylor and his STRC product have played a role in that outperformance.

Strategy bought $1.28B in Bitcoin last week with $377M coming from STRC proceeds. Then on Monday, STRC hit a new record generating 1,369 BTC in buy pressure, just to have that record smashed on Tuesday with STRC moving 3.4M shares and generating enough to buy 2,038 BTC.

The Coinbase premium has also returned, indicating U.S. institutional buyers are showing up, which also aligns with Glassnode data.

So the biggest players are buying the dip, in size. And if they continue, expect digital gold to continue to outperform…

Key Details

• BTC up 8% while Gold (-1%), stocks (-1%) and tech (+1%) chop
• STRC moved 3.6M shares yesterday, raising enough to buy 2,038 BTC
• ~600,000 BTC absorbed by buyers during the sub-$70K dip, per Glassnode

🎯 Polymarket Taps Palantir and TWG AI for Sports Markets

Polymarket announced Tuesday it’s partnering with Palantir and TWG AI to build a sports integrity platform for its U.S.-regulated prediction market

The monitoring runs on the Vergence AI engine, a tool Palantir and TWG built together last year. It does pre- and post-trade surveillance, near real-time anomaly detection, screening against existing sportsbook ban lists.

Bloomberg also reported Polymarket had already been quietly working with IC360, a firm that flags irregular betting patterns for regulators, though the platform hadn’t disclosed it until now.

The timing is not accidental. Prediction markets are doing $2B-$3B in volume per week right now, and sports contracts are 40-70% of that.

Both Polymarket and Kalshi took heat recently over markets tied to the Iran conflict, and multiple professional athletes have faced allegations of taking bribes to alter micro-bet outcomes. Kalshi has already referred two insider trading cases to the CFTC and announced quarterly transparency reports. Polymarket was quiet on compliance – until this announcement.

Key Details

• Monitoring built on Vergence AI engine, a Palantir-TWG AI joint venture
• Platform covers pre/post-trade surveillance, anomaly detection, and banned trader screening
• Sports are making up 40% of Polymarket’s weekly volume and 70% for Kalshi

⚡ Hyperliquid Adds Portfolio Margin and Prediction Markets on Testnet

Hyperliquid’s next network upgrade moves portfolio margin from pre-alpha to alpha, letting users borrow up to 1 million USDC or USDH against spot HYPE or BTC holdings.

That’s a meaningful jump in capital efficiency, meaning traders can now use their spot positions as collateral across the full book rather than managing margin in isolated silos.

For context on how fast the platform is growing: Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 daily open interest just hit a $1.26B all-time high, up from around $500M just a month ago.

The same upgrade brings HIP-4 to testnet, adding prediction market-style contracts to the interface. That puts Hyperliquid in direct competition with Polymarket and Kalshi and other prediction markets.

Hyperliquid is clearly building the onchain version of a full trading stack: perps, spot, portfolio margin, and now prediction markets.

Key Details

• Portfolio margin moves to alpha on next upgrade; users can borrow up to 1M USDC/USDH against spot HYPE or BTC
• HIP-4 prediction market contracts now live on testnet
• HIP-3 daily open interest hit $1.26B all-time high, up ~2.5x in one month

💸 Elon Says X Money Launches Next Month

Elon Musk confirmed X Money will enter early public access next month, the closest thing to a hard timeline the product has had since Musk acquired Twitter in 2022.

The product reportedly supports direct deposits, yield on balances, and in-app payments, with Visa already announced as a partner for secure and instant funding. X has secured money transmitter licenses in more than 40 U.S. states to prepare for this launch, a significant body of prep work.

The notable absence at launch is Dogecoin or any mention of crypto.

Musk has spent years building DOGE expectations through posts and public comments, and the token rallied repeatedly on X-related speculation. No DOGE integration is confirmed for the initial rollout.

Key Details

• X Money enters early public access next month per Musk
• Supports direct deposits, yield, and in-app payments at launch; visa confirmed as funding partner
• No confirmed Dogecoin integration at launch despite years of speculation

🤖 Meta Acquires Moltbook

Yesterday, Meta acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-style social network built exclusively for AI agents.

Moltbook launched in late January as an experimental platform where autonomous AI systems could congregate, post, and interact without direct human oversight. It went viral almost immediately, claiming over 1.6 million agents across more than 200 communities. The posts range from AI bots swapping code to agents speculating about their human owners to building their own religions.

Elon Musk called it the early stages of the singularity. Computer scientist Simon Willison called the content complete slop.

Meta acquired it anyway.

As part of the deal, Co-founders Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr are joining Meta Superintelligence Labs on March 16. MSL is run by Alexandr Wang, the former Scale AI CEO. Terms were not disclosed.

And there is a crypto tie-in. A memecoin named after Moltbook jumped 400% yesterday after the news broke, though it is still 90% off highs of $100M+ hit during the January mania.

Key Details

• Schlicht and Parr join Meta Superintelligence Labs March 16; price undisclosed
• Moltbook launched late January, claims 1.6M agents across 200+ communities
• OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger was separately hired by OpenAI; OpenClaw being open-sourced

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $246M in net outflows on Tuesdday, while the ETH ETFs had $13M in inflows
• STRC moved another 3.6M shares on Tuesday, giving Saylor capital to buy another 2,038 BTC (a new record by 50%)
• Solana ETFs are drawing institutional capital with ~49% of assets tied to 13F filers and $1.45B in cumulative inflows

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were mostly red; DOGE -6%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -3%, TRUMP -0%, PENGU -1%, SPX -6%, FARTCOIN -1%
• Distorted (+1100%), Shape (+26%) and michi (+375%) led notable top onchain movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• xStocks launched an xPoints rewards program for traders, liquidity providers, and DeFi builders
• An AAVE glitch caused $26M in (improper) liquidations across 34 accounts yesterday due to its wstETH risk oracle
• Starknet introduced its STRK20 as a new privacy capability giving nay ERC20 confidential balances and private transfers
• A federal judge blocked Perplexity’s Comet browser from shopping on Amazon via a preliminary injunction
• Rekt teased a new upcoming collab with Moonbirds

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy even at 4.35 ETH, BAYC even at 5.45 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 420 HYPE
• Mocaverse (+22%) and Del Mundos (+18%) led notable movers