Chainlink has just completed a major token unlock, releasing 19 million $LINK tokens valued at a total of $269 million in the past hour alone.
This release is part of its quarterly unlock schedule, and it has sparked significant movement in the market, with a large portion of the unlocked tokens now making their way onto major cryptocurrency exchanges.
Of the 19 million $LINK tokens, approximately 14.875 million were sent to Binance, while 4.125 million were transferred to a multi-signature wallet (address: 0xD50), potentially for future use or distribution.
The unlocked tokens are a next step for Chainlink toward broader liquidity for its native asset, $LINK. The big picture here is that Chainlink has a lot of plans in the works, and those plans could make $LINK more valuable. But market observers are literally watching with bated breath to see how these tokens moving toward exchanges in particular are going to affect price and sentiment.
Chainlink’s Strategic Unlocks: A Pattern of Market Moves
Since August 2022, Chainlink has systematically been unlocking and releasing a large part of its $LINK supply to the market. In total, the project has unlocked 176 million $LINK tokens, initially worth around $2 billion but now valued at approximately $2.43 billion—reflecting nice, juicy growth in the value of the cryptocurrency over time. Some of these tokens have gone to other places, but the vast majority of the (unlocked and released) Chainlink $LINK tokens (151.3 million, to be precise) have found a new home at Binance, where they are likely to be traded.
Chainlink just released 19M $LINK ($269M) as part of its quarterly unlock in the past hour.
🔹 14.875M $LINK ($212.9M) was sent to #Binance
🔹 4.125M $LINK ($56.2M) was transferred to multi-sig wallet "0xD50"Since August 2022, @chainlink has unlocked 176M $LINK (then $2B, now… https://t.co/jlmde9EIlu pic.twitter.com/rVmYORusRZ
— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) March 14, 2025
The history of these unlocked tokens’ prices is also quite remarkable. The 151.3 million $LINK that was put into Binance was actually exchanged at an average price of $11.41 per token. This price point, established during earlier unlocks, has witnessed some serious fluctuations since then, but still offers some insight into the historical value of these tokens at the time they were unleashed onto the market. And, given the current market price of $LINK, if any of these tokens were sold now, they would generate a significant premium for Chainlink.
This ongoing token unlock strategy is part of a broader market design. It strives to balance the release of new tokens with their potential impact on price. The design aims to prevent arrested development—where the price becomes stuck at a certain level, which tends to happen when the number of outstanding tokens seems to be fully accounted for. To avoid this sensation, the designer intends for new tokens to be released in an amount that is just enough to keep up with the increase in demand at the price increase we call an “uptrend.”
Chainlink’s Non-Circulating Supply Remains Strong
Even with 176 million $LINK tokens entering into circulation, Chainlink retains a massive war chest of tokens that haven’t been released into the market. Latest data indicates that the project holds 342.5 million $LINK tokens that are not circulating. Valued at around $4.7 billion, these tokes are ostensibly locked in contracts that keep them off the market. Those contracts and the tokens “staying put” are said to provide ample support and to serve as continued funding to aid the Chainlink ecosystem, to help it grow, and to finance development of future applications.
The non-circulating tokens are a buffer against the ongoing release of new tokens. They help guarantee that, even with an increasing number of tokens in circulation, there’s still a solid base of tokens available for any and all future needs of the Chainlink ecosystem. The reserve tokens can be used to accomplish any number of things: they can be used to release even more tokens into the wild, to offer any number of ecosystem incentives, or to provide liquidity for major partnerships/integration events.
The supply balance between circulating and non-circulating assets allows the Link token to at least maintain some level of control over its tokenomics, even as big unlocks increase the amount of available $LINK on the market every so often. This is doubly true when you consider that the recently unlocked tokens that are going onto the market don’t always mean that the market’s going to react in a healthy way to them. There could definitely be scenarios in which the price of $LINK sees pressure simply because the unlocked tokens are going…
Implications for the Market and Investors
Unlocking $269 million worth of $LINK tokens is big news for both the Chainlink project and the larger crypto scene.
For Chainlink, it shows that people have confidence in the project. It is a necessary step in the project’s evolution, maintaining the flow of liquidity for $LINK and ensuring that it isn’t just a token sitting idly in someone’s wallet. According to LinkPool, market conditions and this unlock could make the price of $LINK go up in the short term. But for long-term investors, this unlock and future liquidity events should be analyzed closely.
Chainlink persists in divulging and dispensing its tokens. These, along with any happening in the immediate future, were likely the pivotal short-term price movement event for LINK. LINK price briefly dipped post-token unlock but has since recovered to pre-unlock price levels. Chainlink unconfined 19 million tokens today. Hence, market participants should probably tune in to the next few price action events as Chainlink continues on its path to decoupling from its DeFi peers.
Currently, everyone is looking at how the freshly unlocked tokens are affecting the balance between supply and demand, particularly when a huge amount is going to Binance and other liquidity pools.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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Image Source: skorzewiak/123RF // Image Effects by Colorcinch
