Chainlink Whales Boost LINK Holdings Amid Price Slump

In the midst of a prolonged bear market for cryptocurrencies, Chainlink's native token, LINK, has seen a notable increase in accumulation by large investors known as whales. According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, the number of wallets holding at least one million LINK tokens rose by 25 over the past year, climbing from 100 as of April 2025 to 125 by early April 2026. This buildup occurred even as LINK's price continued to slide, trading around $8.70 on Friday amid broader market pressures.

The surge in whale activity underscores growing confidence among major holders in Chainlink's underlying technology, a decentralized oracle network that delivers real-world data to smart contracts on blockchains, supporting applications in decentralized finance and tokenized assets. Data from CryptoQuant shows intensified outflows from exchanges, with the top 10 daily withdrawals from Binance exceeding 8,000 LINK tokens on multiple occasions. The monthly average of these large outflows has steadily increased since mid-February, rising from about 2,000 LINK per day to nearly 2,600 LINK. Such movements typically indicate whales transferring tokens to secure storage for long-term...