Why is Bitcoin suddenly rallying?

Meta shares rose about 3% on Monday after the company pushed back on reports that it is preparing to cut more than 20% of its workforce as it tries to fund another big year of AI spending.

The stock move came after a messy few days for the company. Reuters reported on Saturday that senior leaders had been told to start planning for job cuts. Meta called that reporting speculative. On Friday, the stock had dropped nearly 4%.

The scale being discussed is massive. Meta had nearly 79,000 employees as of December 2025, so a cut of more than 20% would hit over 15,000 workers.

If that happens, it would be the company’s biggest layoff round since late 2022, when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would cut 11,000 jobs and slow hiring as part of a broader cost-cutting push.

After that first mention, Mark is the one driving the same balancing act again now: keep spending heavily on AI while trying to keep investors comfortable with the cost.

That pressure showed up again on Monday when Meta announced a new long-term deal to spend as much as $27 billion on Nebius’ AI infrastructure. Nebius shares jumped 14% in early trading after the news.

Over the next five years, Nebius is set to provide $12 billion in dedicated capacity across several sites. The company said that buildout will include one of the first large-scale deployments of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI chips.

Meta is not alone here. Amazon cut 16,000 roles in January as it worked to strip out management layers and bureaucracy while still pouring money into AI. Atlassian said on Wednesday that it is cutting 10% of its workforce, or about 1,600 employees, as it shifts more investment toward AI as well.

The broader picture is getting harder to ignore. In the U.S., more than 12,000 job cuts have already been linked to AI so far in 2026, based on the latest figures from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Oil traders and analysts are starting to say out loud what would have sounded extreme not long ago: oil could go to $200 a barrel if the Middle East crisis keeps dragging on.

The bigger issue is not just fear. It is the real disruption hitting supply and shipping as the U.S.- and Israeli-led war on Iran continues.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has nearly stalled in recent weeks, and that is a major problem for the global energy market. The waterway links the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, and about 20% of the world’s oil and gas usually moves through it.

Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran’s military command, warned on March 11 that oil could hit $200 a barrel, saying regional security had been destabilized and that Iran would keep using the strait blockade to pressure its enemies.

Even so, the headline contracts cooled a bit by Monday morning after earlier spikes. Brent crude for May delivery was flat at $103.16 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate for April delivery fell 1.7% to $96.95 after earlier moving above $100.

Both contracts are still up more than 50% over the past month, the highest levels since 2022. Brent also closed above $100 last week for the first time in four years.

Not everyone is that bearish. Some analysts note that the oil market looked well supplied before the conflict started on Feb. 28. UBS now expects Brent to trade at $90 by the end of June, up from an earlier forecast of $65, and at $85 by year-end, up from $67.

Goldman Sachs said late last week that it expects Brent to average above $100 this month, before easing to $85 in April, though the bank also warned that prices could spike much more if the disruption through Hormuz continues.

Bitcoin unexpectedly began rallying early Monday, as prices abruptly surged past $75,000 at some point, though only temporarily, according to data from TradingView.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up as much as 4.3% at $74,861. Ether climbed 7.4% to $2,287, about twice Bitcoin’s gain, while Solana rose 6.2% and XRP added 4.9%.

Even with the Iran war hanging over markets since late February, Bitcoin has held up better than a lot of traditional assets.

Gold is down about 5% this month, while Bitcoin is up more than 12%.

Part of that support is coming from fund flows.

The 12 U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in more than $763 million last week, marking a third straight week of inflows.

For March so far, total net inflows have reached $1.3 billion, a sign that institutional money is still coming in.

Meanwhile, U.S. crude oil prices briefly topped $100 a barrel as Donald Trump’s administration weighed military strikes on Tehran’s Kharg Island. At press time, U.S. crude was flat at $97 a barrel, while Brent was up 0.41% at $103.

In stocks, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures gained more than 200 points, or 0.45%. S&P 500 futures rose 0.50% and Nasdaq-100 futures added 0.55%. That followed another rough week on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 posted its third straight weekly loss and finished Friday at its lowest close of the year. For the week, the index fell 1.6%, while the Dow lost about 2% and the Nasdaq dropped 1.3%.

During Asia’s stock market session, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose by 1.45% to 25,834.02, while the CSI 300 was flat at 4,671.56.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.13% to 53,751.15. South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.14% to 5,549.85, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.39% to 8,583.40.

Europe was weaker overall, as the Stoxx 600 index fell by 0.36% to 593.69 early Monday. The FTSE 100 was little changed, up 0.04% at 10,265.44.

Germany’s DAX dropped 0.37% to 23,360.03, France’s CAC 40 lost 0.58% to 7,865.56, Italy’s FTSE MIB fell 0.97% to 43,887.46, and Spain’s IBEX 35 declined 0.68% to 16,944.10.