Gold and bitcoin surge to three-week highs after U.S. truce with Iran

A two-week pause in the US-Iran conflict triggered a large-scale rally, pushing gold and bitcoin prices to their mid-March peaks. On Asian stock exchanges, Japanese and South Korean chip, microelectronics and fiber optic manufacturers were the main beneficiaries of the market positivity.

Spot gold in the morning of April 8 rose in price by more than 3%, exceeding $4800 per troy ounce and updating the maximum since March 19, Reuters reports. Futures with a September delivery date for the precious metal jumped 3.5% to above $4900. "It remains to be seen whether Iran will honor the agreements. For spot gold prices <...> the key barriers will be $4930 and then $5000," pointed out independent trader Tim Wong. The value of gold was rising steadily at the beginning of 2026, but it has fallen in price by more than 8% during the Iranian war.

Bitcoin jumped 4.9% to $72,738, the highest level since March 18. Smaller capitalization tokens also showed significant growth, with Ethereum quotes climbing more than 7% during trading. "Bitcoin's morning rise is due to a sense of relief that further escalation [of the Iranian crisis] has been averted for now," Bloomberg quoted Orbit Markets co-founder Caroline Moron as saying. "Crypto markets today are likely to be guided by the performance of equities and exchange-traded commodities," she suggested.

In Asian stock markets, Japan's Nikkei 225 stock index rose more than 5% and South Korea's KOSPI added more than 7%, leading to a brief suspension of trading, Reuters reported. According to Trading Economics, the leaders of growth in Japan were manufacturers of electrical cables and fiber optics Furukawa Electric (up 16.4%) and Sumitomo Electric (up 12.5%), as well as the supplier of materials for microelectronics Mitsui Mining & Smelting (up 11.7%) and the developer of equipment for testing chips Advantest (up 11.6%). Quotes of South Korean manufacturer of memory chips for artificial intelligence SK hynix soared by more than 14%, and the securities of its competitor Samsung Electronics - by 9%.

U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to a ceasefire with Iran on the night of April 8 less than two hours before an ultimatum expired demanding Tehran unblock the Strait of Hormuz under threat of destroying the Islamic Republic's energy infrastructure.

The announcement of a two-week truce dropped the price of benchmark Brent and WTI crudes below $100 per barrel. Futures on the US stock index S&P 500 jumped more than 2% and European futures jumped more than 5%.

Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme National Security Council announced that talks with the United States will begin on April 10 in Islamabad. The agency added that the talks alone do not mean the end of the war.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor