Chainlink (LINK) Price Hits 2-Year Peak as Futures Open Interest Surges to Record High of $770M

Chainlink price reached its highest level in 2 years. Futures Open Interest followed suit, reaching a new all-time high of $770.27 Million.

Chainlink price hit a high note as the crypto achieved a record-breaking $770M in open interest, signaling a surge in market activity and investor confidence.

With $35.57M in realized profits and short-term active address momentum rising, LINK’s futures market is gaining strong traction.

Chainlink Open Interest Surges To Record High As LINK Price Hits 2-Year Peak

Chainlink price hit its highest level in 2 years as futures Open Interest followed suit, reaching a new all-time high of $770.27 Million.

As per Glassnode data, we can see that the amount has increased. This is due to a surge of market participation and interest in LINK futures contracts.

It is worth noting that LINK’s OI has finally surpassed other tokens like TON ($259 Million) and TRX ($356 Million), proving once again how Chainlink is becoming larger in the derivatives market.

Chainlink price peaks were supported by the project’s continued development as a decentralized oracle and has boosted confidence in market performance.

The surge in open interest also represents a broader confidence in the market that LINK will see further development as an oracle, alongside other products currently in development.

The second half of 2023 and 2024 saw open interest in LINK wildly expand, indicating tremendous speculation and market demand for the project.

Traders were increasingly hedging their positions as the amount of LINK being traded is up, as is the volume of futures contracts.

Chainlink Sees $35.57M In Realized Profits, Marking Major Profit-Taking Event

One of the largest spot market profit-taking events for Chainlink happened on December 12th, 2024, with a realized profit worth $35.57 million.

This was the second-largest profit-taking event by LINK in the year after the first one took place in February.

Realized profits rise during this period as traders capitalize on the increase in market activity and recent Chainlink price movements.

Most of the realized profits are due to short-term traders, as 15.3% of profits are coming from those who hold for less than six months, and 22.5% of profits are from ultra-short-term traders.

This means that there are traders out there moving their positions around as price moves.

By far, long-term holders, namely those that have held for over a year, are nearly inactive in this sense, with just the 1–2 year cohort being responsible for 11.6% of realized profits.

An interesting recent profit-taking event has been registering happenings in the market, showing short-term traders buying LINK and selling off higher, yet long-term investors remain bullish.

Chainlink price dynamics still largely revolve around speculative traders who follow short-term market fluctuation for profit.

Although the volatility is there, the relative inactivity of long-term holders suggests more optimism about the future growth potential of LINK.

Chainlink Active Address Momentum Improves, But Remains Below 2021 Peak

An improvement in Chainlink’s active address momentum supports the uptick in its price, which was previously triggered by short-term trading activity.

The short SMA of active addresses is now at 6,682, passing its long-term SMA at 5,878. The uptick corroborates the positive price movement of recent months and demonstrates that user activity is increasing.

Nonetheless, this uptick does not bring active addresses anywhere near the levels seen in 2021, when the count topped out at 23,416.

Although the recent growth in active address momentum is promising, it is certainly no secret that adoption and network usage have not come close to reaching their previous highs.

This all means that while everyone else pays attention to how much Chainlink surged in price, it’s mainly driven by speculative traders, and not much adoption is taking place.

While the growing number of active addresses is a positive sign for Chainlink’s ecosystem, it still sits far below historical highs.

This shows that the difference exists because there is more interest in the current market based on speculative factors than sustainable organic growth.

Long-term Chainlink price stability will require sustained increases in active addresses as the network’s fundamental health stabilizes.