When the Strait of Hormuz stops, what is a real risk avoidance asset

Human civilization is rooted in violence. And there are places that are destined to be the focus of war。

The Strait of Hormuz is one of them, and what will happen to assets, including bitcoin, when this narrow waterway, which is responsible for one fifth of global crude oil transport, is closed

And if this is the beginning of World War III, how will we respond

Impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz

Over the past few decades, the Straits of Hormuz have more than once stood at the centre of geopolitical storms. The closest time to the "closure" was in the late 1980s, when a dark war took place on the sea, during the Iran-Iraq war。

During the 1980-1988 Iran repeatedly threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz and laid mines and attacked tankers in the area in 1987. At that time, there were tanker crews who called the Strait a “clane of death”. The Iranian threat triggered an increase in oil prices from over $30 per barrel to over $45 per barrel. At the same time, the freight costs of tankers also fluctuated as a result of the tense situation in the Strait, which doubled at its highest level。

In 2018, the United States Government withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and resumed sanctions against Iran. The Iranian side stated at that time that it had the capacity to disrupt the transportation of crude oil in the Strait of Hormuz. In July of that year, Iran detained a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Tensions were driving a small rise in crude oil prices。

In June 2025, the U.S. announced "successful strikes" on three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordao, Natanz and Isfahan. Iranian officials subsequently stated that the Parliament had reached a consensus that the Strait of Hormuz should be closed. Following the news, the price of London Brent crude oil jumped by 6 per cent。

It was the years when Iran and Iraq choked each other's economy. Because Iran also relies on this waterway to export oil, blocking it is tantamount to cutting off its own war funds. As a result, threats, harassment and localized conflicts have emerged, always maintaining a dangerous balance of restraint。

Today, Iran is still expressing its hardline through the Strait of Hormuz. On 2 March, Iran's senior adviser to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps publicly declared that “the Strait of Hormuz has been closed” and warned that any vessel attempting to pass by force would face attack. The international shipping security agencies, on the other hand, have shown greater caution — the British Maritime Trade Action Office has stated that, although Iran has been monitored for a “blocking order” issued through radio channels, it has not yet received an official announcement with legal effect. In the sense of international law, the embargo has not yet been completed; from the point of view of real shipping, the straits are almost at a standstill。

FOLLOWING THE ATTACK ON A NUMBER OF TANKERS NEAR THE STRAIT, WAR RISK PREMIUMS SOARED TO UNBEARABLE LEVELS, WITH SOME INSURANCE COMPANIES SUSPENDING THEIR COVERAGE DIRECTLY. THERE IS NO INSURANCE AND FEW REGULAR SHIPOWNERS DARE TO LET THE SHIP INTO THE WATERS. SECOND, THE EMERGENCE OF ELECTRONIC INTERFERENCE. LARGE-SCALE GPS FRAUD AND SIGNAL INTERFERENCE, ALLOWING SHIPS' NAVIGATION SYSTEMS TO SHOW THEMSELVES TO BE “LAND-BOUND” OR SEVERELY DEVIATING. THE SURFACE IS STILL ON, BUT THE COORDINATES HAVE LOST THEIR MEANING. THIS BUSIEST ENERGY ARTERY IN THE WORLD, COUPLED WITH THE SUSPENSION OF THE RELEVANT ROUTES ANNOUNCED BY THE MACKEY, HERBUROTT SHIPPING GIANT, HAS SUDDENLY PLUNGED INTO UNPRECEDENTED SILENCE。

AS THE GLOBAL ENERGY CORE, APPROXIMATELY 50 LARGE TANKERS PER DAY PASS THROUGH THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ, BUT ON 1 AND 2 MARCH, REAL-TIME TRACKING DATA (AIS) SHOWED THAT THE NUMBER OF TANKERS PASSING THROUGH WAS ALMOST ZERO, AND NO LNG VESSEL CROSSING THROUGH THE STRAIT, AN UNPRECEDENTED NUMBER OF YEARS AGO。

What is the retaliatory impact of Iran ' s closure of the Strait of Hormuz on the United States and Israel

First, while the United States has achieved energy self-sufficiency in recent years, global oil prices are linked and the United States cannot stand alone. By 3 March, Brent crude oil had soared to $82/barrel. Goldman Sachs and others predicted that if the embargo persisted, oil prices would be out of $100. This would directly lead to a surge in domestic gasoline prices in the United States, offset by the Federal Reserve’s earlier anti-inflation gains, forcing interest rates to remain high and even trigger recession。

Secondly, the United States allies in Asia (Japan, Korea) and Europe are highly dependent on the Channel for energy. By doing so, Iran is in effect forcing those allies to pressure Washington to restrain Israel or to cease military action, thereby isolating the United States diplomatically。

Moreover, in 2026, at a sensitive time in the political cycle in the United States, the price hikes triggered by the energy crisis were the most painful political poison for the ruling party, as a direct interference by Iran in the internal political stability of the United States。

While Israel does not import oil directly from the straits (mainly from Azerbaijan and others), indirect strikes are equally deadly. The "de facto closure" of the Strait of Hormuz was accompanied by a full-scale escalation of risks on the Red Sea channel. The cost of global trade (including electronics, raw materials and imported food) on which Israel relies has skyrocketed, and insurance companies have begun to deny insurance to ships travelling to Israeli ports. At the same time, the cost of war is highly unsustainable, and the global economic turmoil caused by the blockade could weaken the ability of Western countries to financially support long-term Israeli military operations。

What if this is World War III

We have often mistakenly assumed that the world war began one day。

Indeed, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in one day and the gunshots returned in the streets of Sarajevo. But that political cardhouse was piled up for decades or even centuries. It took only a few weeks to collapse, and it took several months for people to truly realize that they were in the abyss。

The first world war has yet to come to an end and the next conflict has been predicted. By the 1930s, Japan had expanded in Asia, with Germany rearming, swallowing and advancing with the test layer. There was a long "false war" after the invasion. Until the flames of Pearl Harbor rose, many people remained incomprehensible and the world had changed completely。

So, if this is World War III, how should we respond to it in advance

Gold is a symbol of the assets that avoid risk, and silver is more complex. It is both precious and industrial. In an environment where war is expected to heat up, silver tends to rise first with gold, but then fluctuates sharply with the collapse of industrial demand. Historical experience has shown us that silver and silver may have increased more dramatically in the early years of the war, but that the medium-term trend has become more volatile. It's like a magnifier. It's panic, not certainty。

As for oil, it's the core of the game. The Strait of Hormuz carries about one fifth of the global flow of crude oil daily. Once the flow is really broken, oil prices break the whole range without emotional push, just physical facts. As a result of the supply gap of 20 million barrels per day, analysts expect Brent crude oil prices to burst quickly at $100 per barrel。

The upturn in energy prices means a double-burning of global inflation, a ripple of central banks between “inflation-resistant” and “conservation-growth” and a more complex liquidity environment, which is never a friendly signal for risky assets。

More than gold, silver and oil, currency circles are concerned with the movement of bitcoin。

In the early stages of conflict, bitcoin tends to be more of a high-variant technology unit than gold. Because, when global risk preferences decline sharply, investors sell the most volatile assets first. Leverage smoothing, currency-stabilization and exchange liquidity contraction can lead to short-term sharp declines. The Oxford Institute for Economics predicted that if conflicts continued for more than two months, the global stock market might face a 15-20 per cent deep return. This means that bitcoin also has a lot of possibilities for a return to the global stock market。

Moreover, if conflicts really escalate into global wars and traditional financial systems fail in part, the role of encrypted assets will change qualitatively。

In an environment where capital controls are strengthened and cross-border liquidation restricted, the ability to transfer value along the chain is revalued. Mines, electricity, power distribution will become geopolitical variables. The stable currency reserve structure is examined and the judicial attribution of the trading platform becomes a risk point。

At that time, the question was no longer "Cow or Bear", but who was free to settle and who was free to exchange。

A number of prominent investors and institutions have expressed their views on what to do in the event of the war。

J.P. Morgan believes that there is a need to re-examine earlier optimistic predictions that the probability of a global recession has risen to over 35 per cent. It is proposed that some defensive configurations be prepared, such as increasing the cash ratio and reducing the length of bonds。

A month ago, when the Trump administration openly discussed the possibility of including Greenland in the Washington map, Ray Dario, founder of the Bridge Water Foundation, warned. He stated that the world was approaching the brink of a “capital war” against the backdrop of continued warming geopolitical tensions and violent shocks in capital markets。

Although the capital war is a game of currency, debt, tariffs and asset prices, the capital war is a game of money. But capital wars usually revolve around "significant conflicts". Before the United States joined the Second World War, for example, the United States imposed sanctions on Japan, which escalated the "relations" between the two countries。

In the midst of continued warming tensions, Ray Dalio has always stressed a point that is almost “classical”: the value of gold should not be defined by fluctuations in daily prices. “Gold is about 65% higher than it was in the same period last year, and about 16% lower from the stage. People are often caught in the wrong spot and are always concerned about whether price increases should be pursued or bought. He says:。

He repeatedly stressed that gold was important not because it always rose, but because it was less relevant to most financial assets. It is usually strong during periods of economic downturns, credit contractions and market panic; it may appear flat during periods of economic boom and rising risk preferences. But it is precisely this dynamic that makes it an instrument of genuine pluralism。

And with the outbreak of the war between Israel and Iran, the investment proposals of the God of Buffet were reversed。

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Buffet warned not to sell stocks during the outbreak of war, to hoard cash or to buy gold or bitcoin, because he believed that investing in businesses was the best way to accumulate wealth over time。

Buffet stated at that time that it was certain that the value of the currency would decline if it went into a major war. "I mean, it happened in almost every war I know, so the last thing you wanted to do was to hold cash during the war."

BY CONTRAST, GOLDMAN SACHS' FOCUS IS ON OIL PRICES. BECAUSE THE UPTURN IN ENERGY COSTS MEANS THAT TRANSPORT, MANUFACTURING, AND FOOD PRICES ARE RISING AGAIN, GLOBAL INFLATION MAY BE “RECURRING”. ONCE INFLATION IS EXPECTED TO RISE AGAIN, CENTRAL BANKS WILL BE FORCED TO TIGHTEN THEIR POLICY PATHS AND THE LIQUIDITY ENVIRONMENT WILL CHANGE. BASED ON THIS LOGIC, GOLDMAN SACHS' PROPOSAL IS NOT COMPLEX: HEDGE INFLATION RISKS, FOCUS ON COMMODITY FUTURES AND INSTRUMENTS SUCH AS INFLATION-RESISTANT BONDS (TIPS). THE CORE IS NOT A CATCH-UP, BUT AN ADVANCE LAYOUT FOR THE EROSION OF THE PURCHASING POWER OF MONEY。

In addition to this, analysts generally believe that the underlying logic of asset pricing can be fundamentally shifted once the state of “comprehensive confrontation” is reached。

First revalued would be the priority of physical assets. Land, agricultural products, energy, industrial raw materials, such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth, which were considered to be cyclical varieties, became core chips in extreme circumstances. Because war consumes resources first and capital secondly. Stock and derivatives depend on the profits of enterprises and the stability of the financial system, while the resources themselves have the original certainty. When the supply chain is interrupted, the value of physical control will exceed the book rate of return。

And then there's the variation of the technology plate. Artificial intelligence and semiconductors are growth stories in times of peace and the core of productivity in times of war. Calculus determines command efficiency, chips determine weapon system performance and satellite communications determine information sovereignty. Assets such as data centres, power infrastructure and low-orbit satellite networks are rapidly integrated into national strategic frameworks。

The water of the Strait of Hormuz is still in disarray, but everything is irreversible。