On Monday, Bitcoin hit $70,000, $273 million in shorts got liquidated, and oil dropped. The catalyst was a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire framework between the US and Iran. The part nobody is connecting: Pakistan earned that seat at the table by spending 12 months buying access to Trump World through crypto.
Bitcoin price Source: Tradingview
Here is the chain of events, in order, because it matters that you see it all at once.
Step one: The courtship
In March 2025, Pakistan created the Pakistan Crypto Council. One month later, World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform co-founded by Donald Trump and majority-owned by his sons Eric and Donald Jr., signed a letter of intent with the PCC. The deal was brokered by Bilal Bin Saqib, a 35-year-old Pakistani-British entrepreneur who had made it his explicit mission to plug Pakistan into Trump’s crypto orbit.
The signing ceremony in Islamabad was not a quiet back-office affair. Pakistan’s most powerful leaders gathered to welcome Zachary Witkoff, CEO of World Liberty Financial and son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, as if it were a state visit. Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief, was in the room.
The official purpose was blockchain innovation, stablecoin adoption, and tokenized trade infrastructure. By January 2026, the relationship had deepened into a full MOU integrating Trump’s USD1 stablecoin into Pakistan’s cross-border payment infrastructure. At the Bitcoin Vegas conference in May 2025, Saqib praised Trump as “the President who saved crypto” in front of JD Vance and Eric Trump. Pakistan announced a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve modeled on Trump’s own. They were doing everything right.
The Economist noted that many in India interpreted the US-Pakistan crypto deal as Pakistan’s way to win Trump’s favor, and that it perhaps even influenced Trump’s diplomatic posture toward the region. A US Senate subcommittee launched a probe into potential conflicts of interest. WLF’s lawyers dismissed the inquiry. The relationship kept deepening.
Step two: The access it bought
Fast forward to this week. The US-Iran war has been running since February. The Strait of Hormuz is partially closed. Oil is above $100. Trump is posting all-caps ultimatums on Truth Social at midnight threatening to obliterate Iranian power plants.
Into this environment steps Pakistan, now the sole communication channel between Washington and Tehran. The same Field Marshal Asim Munir who stood in the room for the WLF stablecoin signing spent all night on the phone with US Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Zach’s father, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The framework Pakistan put together overnight, tentatively dubbed the “Islamabad Accord,” proposes an immediate ceasefire, Hormuz reopening, and a 15 to 20 day window to finalize a broader nuclear settlement.
Pakistan did not get this role because of its historical diplomatic neutrality or its deep trust relationships with both parties. It got this role because it had spent a year making itself indispensable to the one person whose phone calls Iran’s interlocutors would take seriously. The crypto deal was the door. Munir walked through it.
Step three: Bitcoin notices
Bitcoin hit $70,275 on Monday, up more than 4%, its first time above $70,000 since March. Total liquidations across crypto markets reached $325 million in 24 hours, with shorts accounting for $274 million of that. Ethereum surged 5%. Oil dropped. The entire move was triggered by the Axios report on the 45-day ceasefire framework, the Pakistan framework.
Now hold the full picture in your head at once. The Trump family holds a majority stake in World Liberty Financial. WLF’s stablecoin USD1 is being integrated into Pakistan’s national payment infrastructure. WLF’s CEO is the son of the US special envoy now negotiating the ceasefire. Pakistan used the access that crypto relationship bought to become the sole broker of the biggest geopolitical negotiation of 2026. That negotiation moved Bitcoin’s price by 4% and liquidated $273 million in short positions in a single day.
The same family that profits from Bitcoin going up also controls, through a web of crypto deals and personal relationships, the foreign policy apparatus that just moved Bitcoin’s price.
What this is and isn’t
To be precise: there is no evidence that the Trump family deliberately engineered the ceasefire to move crypto markets. The chain of events is real and documented. The conflict of interest is structural, not conspiratorial. Steve Witkoff is simultaneously Trump’s Middle East envoy and the co-founder of a crypto venture whose value is correlated with the geopolitical stability he is negotiating. His son runs that venture and personally courted the country that is now the sole communication channel in those negotiations.
Iran has since rejected the immediate ceasefire terms and the Strait remains contested. Polymarket gives the deal roughly 30% odds by April 30. If talks collapse, analysts are flagging $65,000 to $66,000 as the support zone to watch.
US x Iran ceasefire by… Source: Polymarket
But the structure is already visible regardless of how the diplomacy resolves. A stablecoin MOU signed in Islamabad in January helped put Pakistan in the room for the most consequential negotiation in the Middle East right now. The ceasefire rumor moved billions in crypto markets in hours. And the people who profit most directly from that price move are the same people who signed the stablecoin deal in the first place.
Nobody has connected this properly. Now you have the full picture.
