Bitcoin rebounds to $82,000 as Trump rules out Iran strikes, oil drops

Bitcoin rebounded to $82,000 on Friday as the broader crypto market recovered from late-Thursday lows, with President Donald Trump’s comments easing fears of an imminent U.S. strike on Iran.

Trump said the U.S. would not attack Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

“We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, published at 12:17 p.m. ET.

He described discussions with Iran as “productive,” but said the U.S. blockade would remain “in full force and effect.”

Bitcoin selling appeared to run out of steam near $80,300 following the post, and prices have since steadily recovered to $82,000. Other major tokens followed a similar trajectory, with ether, XRP, solana and several other cryptocurrencies trimming Thursday’s losses.

Oil, geopolitics drove the selloff

The selling began roughly 24 hours earlier amid fears of renewed military escalation between the U.S. and Iran, which pushed oil prices higher.

Axios reported on Oct. 7 that the Pentagon had instructed U.S. Central Command to prepare for resuming major combat operations in Iran. The report lifted crude prices: futures tied to WTI crude rose from $89 to $93.20 before falling sharply after Trump’s Truth Social post. At the time of writing, crude futures traded at $90.69.

Bunker mode concerns challenged

Meanwhile, fears over “bunker mode” calls, which added to the market pain Thursday, are being challenged.

“Bunker mode” refers to a precautionary, controlled migration of crypto holdings to fresh wallet addresses whose public keys have not previously been exposed on-chain.

The idea, floated by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake early this week, is to reduce exposure if advances in AI-accelerated mathematics were to weaken the elliptic-curve cryptography used to secure Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions before quantum computers become capable of breaking it

Coinbase’s top cryptographer Yehuda Lindell called the concerns “FUD,” saying there was no evidence that long-standing elliptic-curve assumptions had been broken. Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi described them as a “very sober call,” while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the risk from AI-accelerated mathematics is real, but pointed to lattices rather than elliptic curves.

Key levels to watch

Analysts are now watching $81,000 as key support for bitcoin.

“For investors, $81,000 is the immediate level to watch. Fresh purchases can be staggered instead of being committed in 1 trade, while high leverage is best avoided until Bitcoin recovers $83,300 and then $85,500 with stronger ETF inflows. A break below $81,000 could take the market towards $80,000 and subsequently the more important on-chain support near $77,200,” Vikram Subburaj, CEO of India-based Giottus exchange, told CoinDesk.