Chainlink (LINK) price is trading above $9.75 on Sunday, reaching its highest level since May 2022. The price of LINK has risen 13% in the past 24 hours and 23% in the past week.
On-chain data and smart money account Lookonchain reveals the surge in LINK price coincides with whale accumulation and massive uptake on South Korea exchanges Bithumb and Upbit. During the price surge, Bithumb and Upbit accumulated a total of 945K LINK, worth about $9 million.
Currently, exchanges hold roughly 202.6 million LINK, representing 20.26% of total supply and valued at about $1.9 billion. While 37.45 million is currently staked by holders, there are “many giant whales of $LINK”, including one with 81 addresses that holds over 11 million tokens, and another with 38 addresses holding over 8.35 million LINK tokens.
Chainlink’s oracle network is seeing staggering adoption, including after its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) went live. This could explain the LINK token’s top performance in the crypto market amid recent bullish sentiment.
On-chain data suggests whales may be looking for some profit deals after aggressive accumulation over the past several weeks. This whale bought 1.25M $LINK ($9.5M) on-chain at an average price of $7.58 and has made a profit of $2.1M at the current price. However, analysts warn of downside pressure due to whales selling LINK for profit.
Chainlink (LINK) was largely constrained below the $8.60 mark year-to-date, but now its native token is up over the past one-year. Prices reached lows of $4.77 in June this year.
Continued whale accumulation can portend possible near-term price explosion. However, this spike to near $10 could come with some sell-off pressure.
