In the past 5 days, whales have withdrawn Chainlink (LINK) from Binance and transferred it to self-custody wallets, with a total value of approximately $34.1 million, equivalent to 1.37 million LINK. According to Etherscan data, these withdrawals were sent to 30 newly created wallets, with the largest wallet containing over 151,000 LINK, while the smallest withdrawal was 5,000 LINK.
The reason for these withdrawals is not clear. LINK is not only used for speculative trading but also as a utility token that can be staked for passive income. Holding LINK in self-custody wallets also allows users to interact with DeFi applications.
Part of LINK whale activity may target dip buying and taking advantage of short-term volatility. However, despite being held loyally, the price of LINK has yet to break previous highs and maintains a range-bound pattern in a bear market.
LINK 4-hour price chart | Source: Tradingview
Other potential use cases may include new forms of staking, such as liquidity staking with additional rewards. Some free LINK tokens have been transferred into the Stake.Link priority pool.
Not a stranger to the activity of whales, LINK is currently attracting attention, and this accumulation phase is seen as a potential sign for a price increase. A notable whale, pleven.eth, has used LINK for short-term trades, generating profits of over $200,000.
This whale takes advantage of LINK's deep liquidity, executing dip buys and selling when prices rise. The whale's strategy is to use decentralized services to switch between LINK and USDT, profiting from price fluctuations that occur within a single day or even a few hours.
Source: Spot On Chain
Whale activity primarily utilizes spot trades, while the total open interest (OI)* of LINK has decreased from its peak in 2024. Long positions currently account for over 75%, which could incur losses if the price drops.
LINK continues to trade and accumulate within a lower price range after temporarily nearing the $30 mark. Currently, the asset has not been able to surpass that level and has returned to $24.5. LINK also faces more difficulty in pumping, as only 15% of total trading activity is still occurring on Binance.
LINK is trading slightly higher on Bithumb, at around $25.39. However, not all international traders have access to trade in Korea, making this arbitrage trading more difficult.
Chainlink focuses on financial services and cross-chain partnerships
Chainlink continues to operate as a utility project, avoiding direct hype around its token. The platform currently ranks 6th in terms of updates on GitHub and has become one of the most actively developed projects.
In recent months, Chainlink has begun adding more partnerships to its CCIP cross-chain service. After replacing the Ronin bridge, Chainlink has also taken over the connection to Neiro on Ethereum (NEIRO) and ApusCoin (APU). Although these memes are relatively small, they still indicate that Chainlink is diversifying its use cases.
Meanwhile, Chainlink continues to secure over 53% of DeFi value, equivalent to over $36.79 billion. This oracle provider has partnered with 407 crypto projects, not to mention trial use cases in mainstream financial institutions. LINK also appears in the wallet of the DeFi lending protocol World Liberty Financial backed by Trump, retaining over 78,000 tokens since its initial purchase.
The Chainlink platform has also built a loyal long-term holder community that seems to continue supporting the token even during corrections. For this reason, whale accumulation has been noted in previous bull markets, which may signal a breakout.
In recent weeks, whales holding over 100,000 LINK in their wallets have also been accumulating more actively. Small-scale retail users are selling off, altering the token holding profile of this asset. LINK is now fully unlocked, and all supply movements are occurring in the open market. Approximately 50% of the supply is locked with node operators, limiting LINK available freely for DEX activities and utility purposes.
CCIP currently provides cross-chain links to a total of 13 blockchains, on track to replace other types of bridges and becoming the dominant protocol in cross-chain transfers.
*OI (Open Interest) is a measure of the total value of all outstanding or “unsettled” futures contracts on exchanges, and it serves as an indicator of market bullishness as well as trader sentiment around a specific asset.
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