Chainlink (LINK) has been going absolutely parabolic lately – shooting past $18 before falling down to $16.88 at the time of writing – and it is now the fifth-biggest crypto by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.
What is Chainlink?
Its website says it is a “framework for building decentralized oracle networks that give your smart contract access to secure and reliable data inputs and outputs.”
Too much to process?
Charles Hayter, the CEO and co-founder of tracking platform CryptoCompare, puts it in terms the layman can understand: “Chainlink is at its core a means of bridging the gap between the world of blockchains and the outside world.”
Many analysts expect the crypto to skyrocket to at least $100, with some optimistic projections going as high as $1,000 in this cycle, which would be comparable to Ethereum’s jaw-dropping price appreciation in the 2017 bull run.
But is now the time to buy, or should investors wait for a correction?
Some investors fear its dramatic move up – starting from under $2 at the bottom of the Covid-19 crash in March – may be unsustainable and have taken profits.
Their skittishness may be justified, according to a Cointelegraph report.
Chainlink investors may be “becoming increasingly uncertain in its prolonged rally,” according to on-chain analytics resource Santiment, which reported that though there weren’t “many bearish indicators or signs of an impending top” for LINK as of last week, that may no longer be the case.
The number of LINK deposits into crypto exchanges reached an all-time high (ATH) of 8.2 million, the same day the token reached an ATH price of roughly $15. LINK holders may be moving their tokens to exchanges to take profits as the last time an ATH for this metric was recorded the price was at $4.51, the token’s highest at the time, Cointelegraph reported.
LINK’s mean dollar invested age is also “dipping in a big way” according to Santiment, indicating that longer term holders have begun taking profits.
Santiment posted on August 13 that the number of daily active addresses was at 20,800, five days after the ATH of 22,600.
Despite these signs, LINK has not slowed down yet. Thanks to new investors like Dave Portnoy, it now has a market capitalization of more than $6 billion.
What’s behind the LINK rally?
The price of LINK has risen more than 124% in the last two weeks alone, up to its current price from $7.74 on July 31.
Multiple factors could have contributed to LINK rallying to new all-time highs, from the squeeze of short contracts in the futures market to most recently demand from yield farmers trying to get their hands on YAM tokens — before the token tanked earlier today, Cointelegraph reported.
One of the strangest stories around LINK during its rally revolved around Zeus Capital. The investment firm has attempted to talk the price of the token down and even reportedly offered Crypto Twitter influencers payments to post about LINK’s price action, reportedly because the firm holds a massive short position on the token.
Newsweek coverage
One factor contributing to LINK’s meteoric rise is increasing mainstream awareness. Newsweek brought it to the attention of millions of potential investors in an article published on August 13: “While bitcoin remains the dominant force in cryptocurrency, a new offering called Chainlink is gaining steam – entering the top five tokens in terms of market cap and enjoying a surge of attention in the online community.”
Google Trends
Another indication of growing public interest can be found on Google Trends search data, which shows a strong upward trajectory.
