• Chainlink has unlocked 19 million Tokens, which could determine the short-term direction of LINK
• Top whale wallets sold 13 million Tokens two days before the unlock event

On March 15, Chainlink [LINK] unlocked 19 million Tokens worth 269 million USD as part of its quarterly schedule, according to the Blockchain analytics platform Spot On Chain. The company stated,

"14.875 million LINK (212.9 million USD) have been sent to #Binance. 4.125 million LINK (56.2 million USD) have been transferred to the multi-sig wallet '0xD50'"

However, despite the large unlock event, LINK was not affected at the time of reporting, rising around 6% after Bitcoin recovered to $85,000. Therefore, the question arises - Can LINK completely overcome the unlock event without a price drop? TinTucBitcoin has reviewed the price reactions from previous unlock events to get more details.

LINK Analysis after the Unlock Event

According to Spot On Chain, the amount of Tokens unlocked this time is similar to February 2024, but lower than the 21 million Tokens issued in June last year. The previous unlock events (vertical white dashed lines) have been plotted on the chart combined with the price action of BTC (in yellow).

Except for the unlock event in September last year, LINK mainly closed daily trading sessions in red during the remaining events. However, LINK has recovered after one or two days, marking a local bottom unless Bitcoin drops further. Whether this trend will repeat in the latest unlock event is still uncertain.

Source: TradingView (LINK price reaction to unlocks)

However, the largest whale wallets holding 10 million - 100 million LINK Tokens (in red) sold around 13 million Tokens before the unlock event (on March 13). As of the reporting time, this group holds 467.63 million LINK.

In contrast, the wallet group holding 1 million - 10 million LINK has absorbed the sell-off, accounting for about half of the 467.63 million LINK Tokens held by the large whales.

Source: Santiment (whale offloading)

On the trading side, a large player opened a long position on LINK for $7.1 million, a few hours before the unlock event on Hyperliquid. However, this person sold at a loss after the unlock event. Spot On Chain reported,

"The "50x ETH" whale sold 1.34 million LINK on-chain worth $18.36 million at ~$13.7 in the past two hours, losing $512K (-2.7%)."

TinTucBitcoin then assessed the selling pressure of LINK on Centralized Exchanges (CEXes) to predict the potential direction of LINK.

Although the selling pressure has stabilized at the time of reporting, the sell-off has increased over the past two days. The exchange reserves have increased from 30.8 million Tokens to 31 million Tokens, evidencing a slight increase in pre-unlock event selling pressure.

Source: CryptoQuant

Additionally, the reserves on Derivative exchanges have also surged, indicating high volatility and the potential for over-leveraged liquidations to occur.

From a technical price perspective, LINK has bounced off the bottom of the descending channel. If the recovery sustains, the Medium-term range of $16-17 could be reached. However, the persistent selling pressure may pull this cryptocurrency down to the $10 level seen during the US elections in November.

Source: LINK/USDT, TradingView