Chainlink (LINK) posted itself among the ranks of rising tokens over the past days, with increased demand from new whales. LINK added over 12% to recover above $18.
Chainlink (LINK) had one of the strongest recoveries for the past day, as crypto assets started rebuilding their positions. LINK expanded by over 12% in the past 24 hours, rising to $18.78. The token bounced from recent lows of $15.87 as altcoins suffered significant cuts in the past week.
LINK open interest increased to $335M, up from recent lows of $285M. However, more traders are attempting to short LINK, as short positions expanded to 24% of open interest. On Hyperliquid, three out of the five top LINK whales have taken short positions, with the largest one at $4.82M in notional value.
LINK still draws attention to itself as a leading RWA tokenization platform, based on its oracle and data services. Chainlink is also gaining prominence as one of the main oracles for Polymarket.
New wallets accumulate LINK
Following the October 10 liquidation, LINK saw renewed accumulation into newly created wallets. Those addresses emerged in the past week, buying over $116M worth of LINK. On-chain data shows the tokens were sent to 30 new wallets after withdrawal from Binance.
The largest wallet withdrew $7.29M worth of LINK, with several withdrawals in the past two days. Other prominent wallets only hold LINK, withdrawing the tokens in several tranches.
Binance reports over 62M in customer LINK reserves, meaning the latest withdrawals took up to 10% of the exchange’s LINK tokens.
The recent LINK withdrawals follow a general trend of outflows from all exchanges, as the reserves are near an all-time low. LINK periodically sees inflows to exchanges during price rallies, but is currently at an accumulation stage.
Chainlink has rallied ahead of the market on occasion, driven by its community. However, LINK remains near all-time lows against BTC and ETH. LINK has expected further breakdowns to $14, as well as a return to $24.
Chainlink had its most successful period in Q3
Chainlink works as a utility service, securing over 62% of protocols. The oracle secures over $61B in value locked, but its daily fees remain relatively small, between $10K and $15K.
Despite this, demand for Chainlink services reached a peak in Q3. For the past period, Chainlink accrued cumulative fees of $1.11M. Despite the growth, Chainlink is still not catching up with other “fat fee” apps, as most of its activity comes from protocols and not end users.
Chainlink has also previously reported additional revenues from off-chain data services.
Some additional fees also come from the CCIP platform for multi-chain transfers. However, as of October, CCIP fees remain limited, with around $2K in daily fees.
Chainlink has mostly attempted to offer its services as a connection between traditional finance and DeFi. Chainlink will attend the upcoming Payments Innovation Conference on October 21, hosted by the Federal Reserve.
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