Whales Grab $50M in Chainlink’s LINK as Price Climbs 40% in a Month

One of crypto’s hottest narratives – the tokenization of real-world assets – has sparked a nearly 40% jump in the price of Chainlink’s {{LINK}} over the past 30 days, with some crypto wallets apparently picking up over $50 million worth of the tokens.

On-chain analysis tool Lookonchain said one large investor, colloquially known as a "whale," withdrew 2.7 million LINK tokens from crypto exchange Binance using 49 new wallets in that period, while the price climbed to a 22-month high and market cap touched $10 billion.

One of the wallets has transferred more than $9 million in LINK tokens from the exchange in the past 10 days, Lookonchain said. A public database created by the firm shows the wallets hold anywhere from $230,000 to $3.5 million in LINK each.

Whales/institutions continue to accumulate $LINK!

This mysterious whale/institution withdrew 2,745,815 $LINK($49.9M) from #Binance via 49 new wallets.

Whale"0x2A19" withdrew 494,957 $LINK($9M) from #Binance in the past 10 days.https://t.co/QoP2waErBShttps://t.co/iaPHa9f0XB pic.twitter.com/GUW1S33NHf

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 7, 2024

CoinDesk was unable to verify whether the wallets belong to a single owner. They are not labeled as linked to any particular custodian service or exchange on tracking applications Akrham and CryptoQuant.

Bullish drivers

In January, analysts at K33 Research said LINK was "the safest way to profit" from the ever-strengthening tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) narrative. Tokenization allows assets like gold, stocks, and real estate to be represented and traded as digital tokens on a blockchain. According to Boston Consultancy Group, tokenized RWAs could be worth $16 trillion by 2030.

Last month, Chainlink connected its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) with stablecoin company Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) to make it easy for users to transfer the USDC stablecoin across chains. The deal allows developers to build cross-chain applications involving Circle's USDC, including payments and other DeFi interactions, further boosting LINK’s fundamentals.

The dollar value locked in open futures contracts tied to LINK has more than doubled to a record $520 million in the past few months, according to data source CoinGlass. In cryptocurrency terms, open interest has surged 62% to nearly 30 million LINK.

An increase in open interest represents an influx of new money into the market. A rise in price alongside growth in open interest is said to confirm the trend.

LINK prices fell 3.3% to $18.43 in the past 24 hours, Coingecko data shows. Bitcoin was little changed as traders likely took some profits from the price bumps.