Today, LINK’s performance is clearly stronger than it has been over the past few days. Data from Binance shows that LINK started rising today from about $11.39, with an intraday high around $11.82. The latest verifiable trades are in the $11.76–$11.84 area, up about +3.3% on the day; the synchronized quotes from CoinMarketCap are about $11.84.
More importantly, LINK has bounced continuously from the low area around $10.82 on September 15. Based on $11.8, the rebound in this phase has already approached 9%.
Therefore the question tonight is no longer whether “$10.8 can hold,” but rather:
Can LINK truly break through $12, upgrading this round of action from an “oversold rebound” to a “trend reversal”?
I’ll put my judgment up front: short term is raised from neutral to neutral-to-bullish; medium term remains bullish-leaning. But around the $12 level, it’s still the key battleground that determines the nature of the move.
First, bullish/bearish view: three consecutive days of repair, the price structure has already improved significantly
Connecting these last four days will make it very clear.
On September 15, LINK dipped to about $10.82. On September 16, it reclaimed to about $11.06. On September 17, it further rose to about $11.39. Today it continues pushing toward around $11.8. Binance historical market data shows that as of the time of capture on September 18, the high was around $11.819.
That means the previous structure was:
13.68 → 12 → 11 → 10.8
And now it’s starting to take shape:
10.8 → 11.0 → 11.4 → 11.8
This is the main reason I’m raising my short-term assessment today.
But you should be slightly cautious about volume. During today’s rise, there are indeed buy orders, but the Binance daily K data you currently have is still based on today’s intraday stats that are not yet fully closed. You can’t mechanically compare unclosed trading volume with the complete previous day.
So what we can confirm today is:
The price structure is strengthening.
But we still can’t confirm directly:
A decisive breakout with increased volume has already appeared.
Right now, I’ve redefined four groups of positions:
First support: $11.50–$11.60
Yesterday this area was still resistance. Now, if a pullback can hold, it means resistance is starting to turn into support.
Core support: $11.20–$11.35
Falling back here means the strength of today’s breakout is clearly reduced.
First pressure: $11.80–$12.00
It is already being tested now.
The true trend confirmation zone: $12.20–$12.50
If LINK can break above $12 with volume, and then take $12.20–$12.50, I will significantly increase the probability of this round of re-challenging the previous high.
So tonight, the most important sentence is:
LINK has already completed a bottom rebound, but it still needs one final confirmation step: “break above $12 and hold.”
Second, today a very important new on-chain signal appeared: Reserve bought again
The most worth writing about on-chain today isn’t old whale data, but a new change that appeared on September 18.
Latest on-chain reports show that Chainlink Strategic Reserve added about 97,500 LINK again today, worth approximately $1.1 million.
After completing this increase, the Reserve total holdings reach about:
5.96 million LINK
Corresponding value of about:
$68.71 million.
Over the past 30 days, Reserve has increased cumulatively by about:
480,700 LINK.
This data is more worth long-term tracking than simply “some whale buying LINK.”
The logic behind Reserve is:
Chainlink network generates revenue → Payment Abstraction performs conversion → LINK flows into Reserve.
Therefore, if in the future Chainlink’s enterprise revenue, CCIP usage, Data Streams, and RWA services keep increasing, then in theory Reserve could form a source of sustained LINK demand.
And today, it just happened:
Reserve continues increasing LINK + LINK price is rising.
But don’t turn cause and effect upside down here.
Currently, there is no evidence that today’s roughly 3% rise was directly pulled up by those 97,500 LINK alone. Compared with the day’s trading volume in the hundreds of millions of dollars relative to LINK, $1.1 million isn’t enough to change the trend by itself.
Its bigger significance is:
While the price rebounds from 10.8, Chainlink’s own long-term reserves are still continuing to accumulate.
This is positive for the medium-term structure.
Third, whales and exchanges: there is still a risk that can’t be ignored here
Today, you can’t just write “Reserve buying,” because on-chain there is still potential sell-side supply pressure on the other side.
Recently, some on-chain analysis pointed out that about 11 million LINK, worth about $126 million in value, had flowed to Binance-related addresses. Since this data involves exchange address clustering and tag identification, I won’t directly write it as “the $126 million has already been sold.”
The correct way to understand it should be:
Chips enter the exchange ecosystem → potential sellable supply increases.
As for whether they’re ultimately selling:
We must continue to judge by the subsequent trades, price action, and address behavior.
Meanwhile, another recent on-chain dataset shows Binance’s LINK reserves have fallen to about 85.8 million LINK, while the Chainlink network’s daily active addresses have risen noticeably.
So on-chain is still not a one-way structure.
What we’re seeing is:
Reserve is buying;
some whales were buying earlier;
large LINK inflows also appeared on the exchange side;
but the exchange’s overall reserves have declined in phases again.
This is more like:
Large-scale chip redistribution, not all whales acting in the same direction at the same time.
As for tonight’s 24-hour changes of the top 20/top 100 addresses, I still haven’t obtained a reliable continuous snapshot that completes the same cleaning across exchange, custody, contract, and cross-chain address tags.
So today I won’t write:
“Bought up all of the top 20”
or
“The top 100 are currently being shipped out”
This kind of unverifyable conclusion.
Fourth, fundamentals: in these days, Chainlink is actually still expanding
While the price is rebounding, Chainlink’s development layer hasn’t stopped.
The official developer update shows that on September 16, CCIP was officially expanded to Arc Network Mainnet.
Meanwhile:
Data Streams has also been expanded to Arc Mainnet.
Also, Chainlink added Data Streams data support, including data streams such as EUR/USD.
This thing doesn’t look as eye-catching as a “partnership with some bank,” but based on Chainlink’s business model, it’s actually very important.
Because Chainlink is forming an increasingly complete set of infrastructure components:
Data Feeds provide trustworthy data;
Data Streams delivers low-latency market data;
CCIP is responsible for cross-chain communication;
CRE is responsible for institutional-grade workflows;
Proof of Reserve verifies asset reserves;
Payment Abstraction is responsible for fee conversion;
Reserve is responsible for long-term accumulation of LINK.
If you connect these modules, you can see that what Chainlink is truly betting on isn’t just the words “oracle.”
Instead, it’s:
Turning into a whole set of data, interoperability, and settlement infrastructure for traditional financial assets.
This is also the main fundamental reason why I’m still maintaining my medium-term bullish-leaning view on LINK.
Fifth, institutional adoption: the Bottomline line is worth continuing to track
There’s also one institutional piece of news that the market may be underestimating.
Latest compiled information shows that on September 17, Bottomline launched Global Pay Connect. Combined with Chainlink’s CCIP and CRE, it provides its covered bank customers the ability to connect to on-chain payment infrastructure. Bottomline’s own services cover more than 600 banks and involve more than $160 trillion in annual payment flow.
But here, don’t misread it as:
“600 banks have already all used Chainlink.”
This is not the same thing.
A more accurate logic is:
Bottomline has a 600+ bank customer network → Global Pay Connect integrates Chainlink infrastructure → these institutions get a lower-threshold path to connect to on-chain payments.
What truly needs to be observed is the future:
How many banks actually go live, how much trading volume is generated, whether CCIP fees are formed, and finally whether it is transmitted to LINK demand.
If these data keep growing, the value of this kind of partnership will be far higher than merely announcing partnership names.
Sixth, BTC is starting to provide tailwind again, but macro pressure hasn’t disappeared
Today’s LINK rise also has another very important external reason:
BTC has returned to around $78,000.
Binance’s official market data recorded BTC breaking above 78,018.94 USDT at 08:23 UTC on September 18, with an approximately 1.96% increase over the past 24 hours.
This matters a lot for a high-beta asset like LINK.
BTC is stable:
→ Recovery in market risk appetite
→ Capital starts looking again for high-volatility assets
→ Coins like LINK, which previously experienced ~20% corrections, are more likely to show rebounds.
But macro risk still hasn’t been fully removed.
Reuters reported today that U.S. stock funds have seen outflows for the fourth consecutive week; this week’s net outflows reached about $31.44 billion. High oil prices continue to bring inflation pressure. The Fed just raised rates by 25 basis points this week and signaled that if energy prices continue to push inflation higher, policy may still be tightened further.
So the market is now engaged in a very interesting standoff:
Recovery in risk appetite for crypto assets in the short term
versus.
Traditional markets are still worried about high interest rates and inflation.
This means that even if LINK breaks above $12, you still can’t completely ignore BTC, U.S. Treasury yields, and oil prices.
Seventh, long/short scenario analysis: today I raise the short-term stance to “neutral-to-bullish”
My latest assessment
Short term: neutral-to-bullish ↑
Medium-term: bullish leaning.
Compared with yesterday, the assessment is raised by another level.
The reasons mainly have four parts:
First, after the $10.8 phase low, there has already been continuous repair.
Second, it reclaimed $11 again, and the price continues pushing toward $11.8.
Third, Chainlink Reserve added 97,500 LINK today.
Fourth, BTC has returned to around $78,000, providing a better external environment for high-beta assets.
But why isn’t it “clearly bullish” yet?
Because:
$12 hasn’t truly been broken through yet.
And we’ve already seen before that after LINK hits $11.94 it quickly falls back.
So this time, I won’t announce the breakout early.
Bull confirmation conditions
If the following appears next:
LINK breaks out with volume above $12.00
→ pull back to $12 but not break
→ further move above $12.20–$12.50
→ BTC stays above $78,000
→ no new large exchange deposits appear,
Then I will officially upgrade the short-term view to:
Leaning bullish.
Then, for the next stage, we can observe:
$12.80 → $13.20 → $13.68 prior high.
Risk of a fake breakout
If LINK shows up again:
A failed attempt to hit $12
→ fall back below $11.60
→ BTC simultaneously breaks below $77,000
→ Exchanges see new large LINK inflows,
So this round of price increases today can still only be defined as:
the oversold rebound after $10.8
Re-check from below:
$11.30 → $11.00 → $10.80.
If 10.8 is broken down again, the bottom structure in the current phase is basically declared to have failed.
Final conclusion for today
Over the last few days, LINK went through a very complete emotional shift:
A pullback from the $13.68 high
→ breaks below $12
→ breaks below $11
→ panic releases near $10.8
→ regains $11
→ further pushes closer to $11.8 today.
Now, what matters most isn’t debating whether “LINK has a bottom.”
Instead, it’s:
After the $10.8 phase low is temporarily formed, can LINK break above $12 and upgrade the rebound into a new trend?
Meanwhile, today Chainlink Reserve added about 97,500 LINK, bringing total reserves to about 5.96 million LINK. CCIP and Data Streams continue expanding to Arc Mainnet, and the institutional adoption logic is still moving forward.
Therefore, my assessment for today is:
Short term: neutral-to-bullish.
Medium-term: bullish leaning.
Key support: $11.50–$11.60
Core support: $11.20–$11.35
Key pressure: $11.80–$12.00
Trend confirmation: $12.20–$12.50
Tonight, I’m only watching one most important signal:
whether LINK can truly hold above $12.
If it holds, the market structure will change clearly; if it gets smashed down again near $12, you’ll need to keep guarding against a second fake breakout.