Chainlink Surges 3% on Institutional Buying and Whale Accumulation

Chainlink's price surged 3.03% over the last 44 hours due to institutional and whale accumulation, rather than broad market beta.

Institutional buying has been strong, with Bitwise Chainlink ETF inflows reaching $1.5 million over the past week, with multiple days of positive flow. This is an unusually strong engagement for LINK compared to a weak broader market, according to Bitwise's CEO.

The CEO noted that Chainlink was the best-performing asset in the top 15 over that week, gaining about 13.5% while peers were flat or down.

Whale accumulation has also been significant, with on-chain data showing 246 LINK transactions of at least $100,000 in a single day, the highest in five months. Wallets holding 100,000 to 10 million LINK now control about 466.31 million tokens, or 46.57% of supply.

Chainlink itself repurchased around 127,744 LINK for about $1.12 million in the last week, adding to its reserve holdings.

The price movement is also being driven by derivatives traders ramping up exposure to LINK, with open interest back above pre-crash token counts and positive funding rates.

Market-wide leverage is elevated but not extreme, with total derivatives open interest up roughly 3.16% over the last week.