Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were jumping early Wednesday. The global financial system has turned on its head.

Stocks, oil, and gold have endured wild swings in recent days but cryptocurrencies, of all assets, have remained fairly serene amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Bitcoin was trading at $72,798 Wednesday, up 6.7% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data.

It isn't really a haven. The one-time argument that it could act as "digital gold" has long been disproved — Bitcoin is down 45% from its record high above $126,000 in early October. Over the same period, gold prices are up 30%.

It's behaved much more like a risk asset in recent times but has not played that role since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran at the weekend, rising from lows of $63,000 on Saturday.

President Donald Trump may be helping cryptocurrency's Wednesday. Trump put his support behind the Clarity Act — market structure legislation for digital assets, in a post on Truth Social late Tuesday.

He called for it be urgently passed, attacking the banks for holding the legislation "hostage," in a Truth Social post late Tuesday.

Progress on the legislation's approval stalled in January after a draft proposal including a ban on most "stablecoin rewards." Coinbase and other firms wants to be able to pay customers a yield for keeping stablecoin holdings, but that's threat to banks that pay low rates of interest on consumer accounts

Bitcoin's dramatic tumble from its record may be another explanation for its recent strength. If the world's largest cryptocurrency was trading closer to $100,000 when the U.S. started its strikes, this week would be a very different story for digital assets. As it is, Ethereum was up 7.8% and popular altcoin XRP jumped 5.9%.

This year's best-performing stocks were yesterday's losers as Sandisk, Micron, and Western Digital slumped. It wasn't just risk assets — highflying haven gold slid 3.5%.

South Korea's KOSPI stock market index plunged 12% Wednesday, after slumping 7% in the previous session. Remarkably, it's still the best-performing global stock market in 2026, up 21% since the start of the year.

So if you're having a good year, you're having an awful week. But the opposite is also true. Software stocks have had a disastrous start to 2026 but they enjoyed some rare outperformance Tuesday. Workday stock was the S&P 500's biggest riser, up 7.2%, while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector exchanged-traded fund climbed 1.6%.

It's the same for cryptocurrencies, they've fallen so far that they seem to be protected from the selloff. Whether that helps Bitcoin get any closer to its record highs or not, remains to be seen.

Write to Callum Keown at callum.keown@dowjones.com

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