The US’ capture of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has done little to affect Bitcoin prices over the weekend, with some experts claiming crypto markets will not suffer as a result of Washington’s strikes.
On X, Michaël van de Poppe, the founder of the crypto investment firm MN Fund, said he did not foresee “a widespread Bitcoin correction based on the attack in Venezuela.”
“It’s a planned and coordinated attack on Maduro, and is already past us,” van de Poppe said.
While crypto markets seem unmoved, some fear the picture will change when equities and commodities markets reopen on Monday.
Big players’ return
“The likelihood of more negativity on the markets from that single event [is] relatively slim. I would assume we’ll see Bitcoin north of $90,000 [in the] coming week,” van de Poppe said.
But others were less optimistic.
“There’s a lot of geopolitical tension, and next week the big players will return,” the crypto market analyst Lennaert Snyder wrote on X. “So we’ll probably see more volatility on Bitcoin after the weekend.”
An editorial in the Indian newspaper Economic Times noted that geopolitics “has muscled its way back into markets at the very start of 2026.”
“An audacious US military operation […] has jolted investors into reassessing risk, setting up potential turbulence across crude oil, precious metals, currencies, and equities when trading resumes on Monday,” the newspaper’s senior digital producer Riya Sharma wrote.
Sharma said market participants expect oil prices to drop when trading opens on Monday.
“Heightened geopolitical risk typically drives capital out of risk assets and into perceived safe havens,” Sharma added. “Equity markets may not be spared. Wall Street could see a knee-jerk reaction given that the US is directly involved in this conflict, unlike the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Iran war that dominated markets in 2025.”
New Year fears
Bitcoin prices continued their slow crawl back above the $90,000 mark over the weekend, apparently unaffected completely by the events of January 3, which saw US special forces capture Maduro and his wife.
Maduro has since been taken to Manhattan, where he was sent to the same detention center that once held Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of the crypto exchange FTX.
Worries about incoming turbulence will come as a New Year shock to Bitcoin investors, who enjoyed their least volatile year to date in 2025.
K33 Research reported that huge Bitcoin price swings are now a thing of the past, and added that Bitcoin’s four-year price cycle “no longer applies.”
