LINK Surge in Whale Activity

LINK, the native cryptocurrency of the decentralized blockchain oracle network, Chainlink, has observed a significant increase in whale activity, with over $1 billion in large transaction volume reported in the last 24 hours. This massive movement has drawn attention from the crypto community.

According to data from IntoTheBlock, Chainlink’s large transaction volume surged by 1700.73% in the past day, totaling $1.01 billion, equivalent to 73.41 million LINK in cryptocurrency terms. This marks the highest large transaction volume recorded this year, apart from Sept. 20, 2024, when large transaction volumes reached 65.02 million LINK.

In the last 24 hours, LINK has experienced remarkable activity. Chainlink completed its quarterly token unlock the day prior, releasing a total of 19 million LINK tokens (approximately $262 million) from two non-circulating supply addresses. Notably, 14.875 million LINK (about $205 million) were transferred directly to Binance, while the remaining 4.125 million LINK (nearly $57.04 million) were sent to a multisig address.

Prior to this, Chainlink had completed 10 unlocks, with nine resulting in price increases within 30 days following the unlock.

> The #Chainlink non-circulating supply wallet unlocked and deposited 14.875M $LINK($216M) to #Binance again today.
>
> Before this, #Chainlink had unlocked 10 times in total, and 9 of them saw price increases 30 days after unlocking. Tweet

Since August 2022, Chainlink has unlocked 176 million LINK (valued around $2.43 billion). Of these tokens, 151.3 million LINK were deposited directly to Binance at an average price of $11.41. Chainlink currently retains 342.5 million LINK, worth nearly $4.7 billion across various non-circulating supply contracts.

Whales Making Moves

On-chain analytics platform SpotOnChain reported that a crypto whale recently spent 7.1 million USDC to purchase 506,226 LINK at an average price of $14.03. To finance this transaction, the whale sold 1,108.83 ETH for 2.1 million USDC and withdrew an additional five million USDC from Spark. Subsequently, the whale’s total LINK purchases during this period increased to 863,174 LINK, valued at $12.1 million at an average price of $14.02, following previous investments in Chainlink.

Unexpectedly, the whale sold 1.34 million LINK on-chain for $18.36 million at a price of $13.7, incurring a loss of $512,000 or 2.7%.

Simultaneously, the whale closed its LINK longs on GMX for a $195,000 profit and transitioned its LINK longs on Hyperliquid into BTC shorts with 40x leverage, currently sitting on an unrealized profit of $290,000. This activity coincided with Chainlink’s massive token unlock hitting the market.