Chainlink whales have been accumulating aggressively, but the asset is still seeing strong downward pressure.
By Wahid Pessarlay
Editor Julia Sakovich
Updated
2 mins read
Chainlink LINK $12.96 24h volatility: 2.0% Market cap: $9.03 B Vol. 24h: $594.97 M has been seeing strong technical and fundamental signals over the past month, but the market-wide bearish sentiment continues to drag the asset down.
Firstly, according to data from Santiment, the top 100 Chainlink whales have accumulated 20.46 million LINK, worth $263 million, since early November.
🐳 ChainLink's top 100 largest wallets have been accumulating since the start of November, collectively adding 20.46M $LINK (~$263M) back to their wallets.
👀 Watch the accumulation, & view the individual wallets that make up this group of whales here. 👇https://t.co/YGqTlVizTm pic.twitter.com/P8A7j1vYTj
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) December 16, 2025
The movement has significantly lowered the LINK selling pressure since many investors expected the approval of the LINK-based exchange-traded funds in the US.
Then, on Dec. 2, the Grayscale Chainlink Trust ETF began trading on the NYSE Arca exchange. While there aren’t many pure Chainlink ETFs yet, the landscape is emerging rapidly, with applications from others like Bitwise and CoinShares.
The ETF approval, along with the whales’ accumulation, triggered a short-lived rally for the LINK price, gaining 20% on Dec. 3.
“No catalyst is good enough in this market,” wrote The Motley Fool analyst, hinting at LINK’s bearish momentum.
The reopening of the US government, the US CPI data for September, the launch of the first LINK ETF, and the third consecutive US Fed’s rate cut brought short-term gains to the crypto market but the bullish sentiment soon faded.
While the analyst calls Chainlink a “solid long-term investment opportunity,” he adds that the current macroeconomic concerns have been pressuring the crypto market. For instance, the are fears of a recession in the US and Japan have been active as major bearish catalysts.
LINK, the native token of the decentralized oracle network that connects blockchains with the real world, has recorded a 57% drop over the past 12 months.
The token dropped 6.5% in the past 24 hours and is trading at $12.7 at the time of writing.
The overall Chainlink accumulation also seems solid. According to CoinGlass data, leading centralized crypto exchanges recorded a net outflow of 4.35 million LINK, worth $55.4 million, over the past 30 days.
Disclaimer: Coinspeaker is committed to providing unbiased and transparent reporting. This article aims to deliver accurate and timely information but should not be taken as financial or investment advice. Since market conditions can change rapidly, we encourage you to verify information on your own and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.
Wahid has been analyzing and reporting on the latest trends in the decentralized ecosystem since 2019. He has over 4,000 articles to his name and his work has been featured on some of the leading outlets including Yahoo Finance, Investing.com, Cointelegraph, and Benzinga. Other than reporting, Wahid likes to connect the dots between DeFi and macro on his newsletter, On-chain Monk.
