Chainlink (LINK), a leading oracle, is affirming its long-term potential with its recent price strength, whale activity and institutional adoption in an uptrend.
The recent price strength in the last 24 hours made LINK the leader by daily gains among the top 100 cryptos by market capitalization. These exceptional gains in a day ahead of other tokens, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Still, ETH led in gains for the last 3 months, eliciting an altcoin season sentiment.
Why did Chainlink then outperform others on August 17th?
Why is Chainlink Up 18% Plus?
The price of Chainlink rose by more than 18% as of press time, hitting $26. A few months ago, the LINK price was trading around $10. LINK bottomed at $10.20 on April 9th as the price advanced to the current value from the zone.
LINK was also getting institutional interest. Visa and Fidelity were doing their pilot program of CBDC on the Chainlink blockchain. Also, JPMorgan and Swift were in the process of integration to facilitate fast and massive transactions more efficiently.
Additionally, Chainlink reserve was adding more tokens from a portion of the revenue they collected. This trade attracted more capital due to the volume and social attention from LINK’s reserve.

Funding rates and open interest also rose. New traders were onboarding the LINK rally, potentially fueling its further. The non-stop bidding war among buyers kept the altcoin price higher each time during the day.
Also, the infrastructure of LINK gave the altcoin an edge. Per Zach Rynes in X (formerly Twitter), Chainlink was third among leading cryptos with key architecture for decentralization. The community voice predicted that LINK flipping XRP by market cap was inevitable.
Still, whales got involved. But in what way?
Whales Swapping Buying And Swapping ETH To LINK
Whales were also getting highly involved in Chainlink in anticipation for a price surge. A wallet belonging to a savvy whale who earlier profited from ETH and SHIB diverted attention to LINK. This whale swapped Ethereum worth over $21 million to LINK tokens per Lookonchain.
Also, another whale sent $17 million LINK to a cold wallet from Binance. Still from the same exchange, another whale named ‘Token Millionaire’ sent $4 million LINK tokens. This took his accumulation to a total of almost $7 million in only 30 days.

More reasons as to why the altcoin was up continued to emerge. Particularly, whales and institutional involvement over the last month fueled this move more. Their large capital was enough to push the price in their desired direction. The run from $10 to $26 represented a 2.6x gain.
With the value surge in play, will LINK price continue with this momentum?
Chainlink Price Action To Break 4-Year Trendline
A 4-year descending resistance characterized the chainlink price action on the weekly timeframe. Price was approaching this zone, the final test before it exploded back to its ATH around $52.
The volume traded during the day stood at $2.23 billion, adding to the momentum needed to reach this level. If Chainlink price broke above this resistance zone and sustained, $52 became a possibility. Otherwise, accumulation could continue until the altcoin season started.

The chart also affirmed that new buyers and existing ones were mainly involved at the $10 level. Since whales and institutions were driving the price of LINK, their withdrawal posed a risk of price collapse.
That said, monitoring of the LINK whale activity could offer insights when to get in and out of the market.




