Mooners and Shakers: Whale investors dive deep into Chainlink, while institutional money eyes Solana

Bitcoin is still ranging in the mid-US$29ks, as the stagnation for the crypto market continues. However, there’s still plenty happening behind the charts, including some big interest for altcoins Chainlink and Solana.

Let’s start with Chainlink

What’s that again? It’s a web3 oracle.

Er… righto. Like the Oracle of Omaha or the Oracle of Delphi, one of whom we’re pretty sure hates crypto? Nope.

It’s a web3 services network built on Ethereum and is ubiquitous across the crypto industry. It helps decentralised-app-building developers seamlessly access “real-world data” and off-chain computation and bridge that to smart contracts running on blockchains.

Look, it’s important, okay?

Annnyway, the point of the mention up front here is that it seems things are afoot in the deeper waters of crypto investing when it comes to Chainlink’s token, LINK.

New data from the crypto market analytics platform Santiment shows that deep-pocketed investors (aka “whales” and “sharks”) have recently been seen (presumably on crypto fish finders devices) gobbling up some US$192.2 million of the asset in less than four weeks.

That’s a fair bit. Has the price rocketed then? Not exactly, but it’s been trending upwards of late (roughly 30% over the past month, 5% over the past week and 4% over the past 24 hours).

So something’s happening with one of the most respected altcoins. And, notes Santiment, Chainlink’s development activity has been receiving a boost, too.

“Chainlink’s GitHub development activity has been notably higher this summer, leading to the asset cracking the top 5 most frequent developed assets,” said the blockchain data gurus.

“Additionally, whales and sharks with 100,000-10 million LINK now hold the most coins since December 2022.”

Meanwhile, institutions eye up Solana

Coinbase’s ace of Base

• Coinbase’s brand, spanking new Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Base is up and running and open to the public and ready to bridge over some ETH for all those interested and still wondering if Base will do an airdrop.

Note… Coinbase/Base has indicated in the past that they won’t be creating and distributing a token, but in this cautious era of SEC boss Gary Gensler’s draconian oversight on the US crypto industry, people say a lot of things to keep the regulators sweet.

But… surely GG’s days are numbered… right? Right?

Multi-billionaire Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein certainly reckons “waiting out regulators you don’t like” is a popular strategy in Washington. He also talked up Bitcoin, saying “it’s not going away”. Well, that’s kind of talking it up.

But asides aside, the Base news carries some significance, seeing as Coinbase is the only publicly listed native crypto company.

It certainly carries meaning for those who hold COIN, and that’s because the company expects Base to add a lucrative stream of revenue once development really kicks into gear with applications built upon its blockchain layer.

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• FLEX Coin (FLEX), (market cap: US$785 million) +13%

• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$1.62 billion) +10%

• Rocket Pool (RPL), (market cap: US$536 million) +9%

• Pepe (PEPE), (market cap: US$519 million) +5%

• Chainlink (LINK), (market cap: US$4.14 billion) +4%

SLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: US$505 million) -9%

• XDC Network (XDC), (market cap: US$861 million) -8%

• Optimism (OP), (market cap: US$1.11 billion) -8%

• Hedera (HBAR), (market cap: US$1.95 billion) -3%

• Injective (INJ), (market cap: US$663 million) -3%

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe has a suggestion for you for the next crypto bull cycle (strictly not financial advice, of course). And it comes in the shape of a popular dog meme…

An interestingly negative take here on the state of NFTs right now from “NFT God”…

Speaking of NFT projects…