The price performance of Chainlink is one of the previous week’s biggest narratives, rivaling Bitcoin making its way above $43,000 again. According to data from CoinGecko, the altcoin recorded a significant 25% price increase in the last seven days.
However, the price of LINK seems to be slowing down, as it keeps struggling to hold above the $18 level. While expectations are that this sluggishness will blow over soon, the question still is – why is the Chainlink price stalling?
16 Million LINK Tokens Transferred To Binance
The latest on-chain revelation has offered insight into why the price of LINK is facing some form of bearish pressure. In a post on X, crypto analytics firm SpotOnChain disclosed that 19 million tokens (worth about $341 million) were recently unlocked from three of Chainlink’s non-circulating supply contracts.
In a more detailed breakdown, the on-chain analytics firm revealed that 15.95 million tokens (valued at $287 million) were moved to Binance, the world’s largest centralized exchange. Meanwhile, the remaining 3.05 million Chainlink (worth $54.3 million) were transferred to multi-sig wallet, 0xD50f.
According to SpotOnChain, this is not the first time transactions involving Chainlink’s wallets and of this caliber will happen. The analytics platform disclosed that Chainlink has been unlocking and transferring some of the unlocked tokens to Binance as far back as 2022.
On-chain data shows that Chainlink has unlocked a total of 106 million tokens, with 88.95 million LINK sent to Binance since August 2022. At an average price of $9.06, the entire worth of these transactions stands at $805 million.
SpotOnChain noted that the last two unlocks have been followed by a slight dip in LINK’s price. The last unlock saw the Chainlink token fall from almost $19 to $17.5 on Saturday, February 3.
As of this writing, the LINK token is valued at $17.86, reflecting a nearly 1.5% price jump in the past day.
Chainlink Records Multi-Month High In Transaction Volume
It appears that the price of LINK will not remain stagnant for very long, as the most recent on-chain data indicates that Chainlink has experienced a notable increase in network activity over the last few days. Positive network fundamentals could be all the altcoin needs to resume its bullish run.
According to Ali Martinez, the network recently witnessed a significant surge in transaction volume, bringing the metric to its highest in almost two years. Based on IntoTheBlock’s data, more than 72.24 million LINK tokens (equivalent to $1.3 billion) were transacted on Friday, February 4.
The Chainlink price continues to hover around the $18 level on the daily timeframe | Source: LINKUSDT chart on TradingView