US President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday that the US is “in serious discussions with a new and more sensible regime” to end military operations in Iran, the first public acknowledgment of regime change in Tehran since the conflict began five weeks ago.
The term “new regime” suggests that the leadership structure that existed when the war started is no longer in place.
However, in the same post, Trump demanded that the Strait of Hormuz be “immediately open for business” and threatened to “blow up and completely obliterate” Iran’s electrical generation facilities, oil wells and Kharg Island if an agreement is not reached shortly. He added that desalination plants were also under consideration.
These are all targets that the US has deliberately avoided hitting during the five-week conflict.
The combination of a potential ceasefire with a new government and the most explicit threat yet to civilian and energy infrastructure makes this a two-sided headline that the market will struggle to price cleanly.
The de-escalation signal is that negotiations are underway with a new regime and that “great progress” has been made. The escalation signal is that the president has just publicly listed every piece of critical infrastructure he is prepared to destroy if these negotiations fail.
Bitcoin jumped to $67,580 on the news, up 1.3% in the past 24 hours. Ether fared better, up 3.1% to $2,064. Solana rose 1.9% to $84.09 and XRP added 1.0% to $1.35. The weekly picture is still uniformly red – with BTC down 1.3%, XRP 1.2%, SOL 2.2% – but Tron continues to quietly outperform the entire majors complex, up 1.3% in 24 hours and 5.3% on the week.
The bounce pinched a lot of shorts on the way up. CoinGlass data shows $9.32 million in short liquidations in the last hour alone versus only $207,000 in longs.
Traders took on $340 million in liquidations over a 24-hour window, absorbing the bulk of the $242.25 million overnight flush before the Trump post landed. The largest single order was a USD 9.8 million liquidation of BTCUSD on Bybit.
