It was a hot weekend for Chainlink Marines, supporters of the famous crypto project, who celebrated a strong increase in the price of the LINK coin, which rose by more than 30% between Saturday and Sunday.
There seems to be no particular news on the horizon to justify the rally, which could be the result of heavy speculation or hoarding by holders who believe in the technological growth of the oracle.
At the time of writing, LINK is trading at $10.15, a level not seen since May 2022.
After the crypto’s long bear market, are we facing a reversal phase for Chainlink, or will the pump be turned on in the coming days?
See all the details below.
Chainlink (LINK) price soars in the crypto market with +37% last week: broken sideways structure unchanged for 500 days
The Chainlink Marines, defenders of the crypto market’s greatest oracle, are celebrating after their LINK coin crossed the fateful $10 mark with a +34% surge over the weekend.
This is an unusual pump because it was not supported by any particular news and was not accompanied by any particularly noticeable growth for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The most interesting thing to note is that with the last candle week that just ended, LINK finally broke a 530 day long sideways trend and reached a level that had not been touched since May 2022.
Trading volume over the last two trading days has reached $300 million on Binance for the LINK-USDT pair alone.
Looking at the total value of trades on all exchanges, Coinmarketcap data shows a figure of $1.3 billion in the last 24 hours.
LINK, a utility token in the Chainlink ecosystem used to access oracle services and obtain accurate data within a blockchain, is still far from its all-time high of $52.4 reached in May 2021.
In any case, the recent rise in the cryptocurrency’s price could herald the return of the bulls to the market, with positive performances also possible in the coming weeks.
Currently, Chainlink and its workhorse LINK have a market cap of $5.6 billion, making it the 13th most capitalised cryptocurrency in the industry.
In the space of a week, it has overtaken the likes of Litecoin (LTC), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Polkadot (DOT) and Dai (DAI).
Now the coin is aiming for the top 10, but will have to contend with speculators in the crypto market who have taken advantage of every opportunity for LINK to rise over the past year and a half to open heavy short positions.
What is the reason for LINK’s rise?
As mentioned above, there does not seem to be any news related to the recent rise in the price of Chainlink (LINK).
Not even Bitcoin’sù breakthrough of the $30,000 mark and ethereum’s positive performance seem to be able to justify a similar rally for the crypto oracle, given the minute percentage changes that the market’s top 2 assets recorded over the weekend.
Analyst Eric Wallach, who works for Platoon Digital, had yesterday shared a figure on X that showed a sharp increase in fees recorded by the “Chainlink price feeds” service on Polygon, related to individual transactions, and believed this to be the cause of LINK’s price pump.
However, the same analyst, after reviewing some of the data and removing some erroneous elements in his assessment, has shown that despite the record-breaking individual fees, October will end up being the worst month since the beginning of the year in terms of fee income on Polygon.
User X ‘Lookonchain’, who closely examines on-chain data to understand the nature of certain movements in the crypto market, believes that two Korean exchanges are behind Chainlink’s latest pump.
Specifically, Bithumb and Upbit have accumulated a whopping 945,000 LINK, or about $9 million, during the cryptocurrency’s recent rally.
Aside from its contribution to the LINK price, it should be noted that the Chainlink project is one of the most respected and technologically advanced in the industry, with future projections for the adoption of the oracle and its associated services growing.
The introduction of CCIP (Croos-chain Interoperability Protocol) could become the next standard for cross-chain exchange, enabling a wide range of transactions between the various existing distributed networks.
Recent collaborations with SWIFT have created fertile ground for institutional endorsement of the technology, with billions and billions of dollars ready to enter the blockchain world thanks to Chainlink’s gateway.
A recent report from Bank of America suggested that Chainlink could be the driver of the next boom in the real asset tokenisation market.
Sergey Nazarov, founder of the project and head of the Chainlink Marines, believes that the tokenisation industry will be worth QUADRILLIONS of dollars (millions of billions) in the future.
Will the price of Chainlink (LINK) see a continuation of demand or a retracement in the coming days?
Now the main question that all speculators of Chainlink (LINK) are asking themselves is whether the crypto will continue its bullish run or will see a retracement in the coming days.
Bearing in mind that the mechanisms inherent in crypto financial markets can hide pitfalls and asset prices can behave in a totally unexpected manner, we can state the following.
The simultaneous increase in volume and open interest in the futures markets that accompanied the rise of the last two days seems to be coming to an end in the short term, so we are likely to see at least a slight retracement in LINK in the coming days.
The RSI on the 4-hour chart is also overbought, suggesting that a bearish move may be imminent.
However, given that open interest in Chainlink and its token has not reached the $380 million mark since January, we can imagine that the recent rally is not just a speculative move by a few whales, but is underpinned by a much broader movement.
After a very long bearish winter, it may finally be time for the chainlink marines to celebrate.
It should also be remembered that unlike 99% of the tokens on the market, LINK started the previous bull run earlier than even bitcoin, and even in this case was able to start seeing increased demand before other crypto assets.
What is crucial for LINK now is that the psychological $10 level is not breached this week, and that the price consolidates and then finds a base that can support future rallies.