Original Title: Somebody Bought 10% of the LINK Supply—and Nobody Knows Who
Original Author: @LinkBoi777, Crypto Trader
Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Based on in-depth on-chain data analysis, I discovered an unusual pattern while studying the top 100 wallets holding LINK.
Multiple wallets hold almost identical amounts of LINK, each around 2 million coins, and do not hold other assets. Initially, I identified 8 to 9 similar wallets, but further investigation revealed that these were just the tip of the iceberg.
Ultimately, I found a total of 48 wallets, all with nearly the same LINK balance and highly consistent trading patterns. Based on this consistency, I believe they are all controlled by a single entity.
In other words, between August 2025 and January 2026, a certain entity accumulated approximately 100 million LINK, accounting for 10% of its total supply.
It is clear that this entity is making every effort to remain hidden. Its accumulation strategy is meticulously designed to avoid drawing attention or affecting market prices.
Why do I believe these wallets belong to the same entity?
There are several key pieces of evidence supporting this:
- Each wallet holds about 2 million LINK.
- All wallets were created between August and November 2025.
- All purchases came from the same Coinbase hot wallet address: 0xA9D1e08C7793af67e9d92fe308d5697FB81d3E43.
The most compelling evidence is the comparison of trading heatmaps. The heatmaps of these wallets are astonishingly similar, executing similar amounts of LINK trades on the same dates, following the same accumulation rhythm.
There are slight timing differences: later-created wallets made larger initial purchases, while earlier-created ones were more gradual. However, after the initial phase, all wallets began to consistently buy on the same date each month.
For example, observing wallets 54, 55, and 56, the data from August shows slight differences, but the trading behavior from September to January is almost completely synchronized. This pattern repeats across all 48 wallets, as if they are operating on the same schedule.
The link displays these 48 wallets and their trading heatmaps for readers to verify.
Why did the market not react to the accumulation of 10% of the supply?
The answer is simple: this entity is making every effort to avoid disturbing the market.
They are using anonymous wallets with no public institutional connections and are structuring their purchases in batches to avoid a sudden spike in demand. The goal is clear: to accumulate LINK discreetly without triggering market speculation or following.
To achieve this, they took advantage of a rare market event.
The Market Crash on October 10
According to Raoul Pal, market makers were unable to access APIs at that time, leading to severe imbalances in the crypto market. At the same time, tariff concerns triggered panic selling, flooding the order book with sell orders. Due to a lack of buyers to absorb the selling pressure, the market experienced a free-fall decline.
To prevent a complete collapse, trading platforms were forced to intervene, placing large buy orders to absorb the selling pressure, which resulted in a backlog of crypto asset inventory.
In the weeks following the crash, these assets were gradually released back into the market in October and November, creating sustained selling pressure and unusually abundant liquidity.
This was the perfect opportunity for secret accumulation.
The entity behind these wallets took advantage of the liquidity window to absorb LINK in large quantities while avoiding driving up prices. Notably, 39 of the 48 wallets were created during the highly liquid months of October and November.
Two Possible Motives
One is opportunistic accelerated accumulation. This entity viewed the market crash as a rare opportunity to speed up its accumulation process, which might otherwise take several more months.
The second is an urgent strategic reserve. This entity may urgently need to acquire LINK and used the liquidity provided by the crash to discreetly build its position, avoiding price volatility. Whether this urgency stems from strategic needs or external pressures remains unclear.
Impact on Trading Platform Balances
The influx of new wallets aligns closely with the sharp decline in LINK balances on trading platforms as shown by CryptoQuant data from October to November.
This decline corresponds exactly with the creation of 39 new wallets, each accumulating about 2 million LINK during this period.
Who Could Be the Entity Behind This?
The potential range of entities capable of accumulating 10% of the LINK supply has significantly narrowed.
Chainlink Labs
This is a less likely possibility. Chainlink officially holds about 300 million LINK as non-circulating supply, which is publicly noted and accounted for in their planning. Additionally, Chainlink has publicly announced a weekly buyback of $1 million in LINK; if they were secretly hoarding nearly $1 billion in LINK at the same time, it would contradict their public stance.
However, the timing is noteworthy: accumulation began on August 11, 2025, just four days after the announcement of Chainlink's reserve mechanism, which may have sent a long-term bullish signal to the outside world.
BlackRock
This is one of the more reasonable speculations. BlackRock, with an asset management scale of $14 trillion, has repeatedly stated that tokenization is the future of financial markets. Its BUIDL fund, exceeding $3 billion, heavily relies on Chainlink's CCIP, proof of reserves, and data services.
Holding 100 million LINK could help it secure a strategic position in tokenized infrastructure. Relative to its size, this allocation is not large but is significant. Secret accumulation also makes sense; if they publicly announced a large purchase in advance, it would undoubtedly drive prices up significantly.
JPMorgan
This is also a possibility. This trillion-dollar bank is rapidly expanding its blockchain division (Kinexys, formerly Onyx) and has become one of the most active traditional institutions in the field of tokenized assets and cross-chain finance.
Its tokenized currency market, capital flow projects, and multiple public chain settlements in 2025 all rely on Chainlink's CCIP, runtime environment, and oracle data streams. Holding 100 million LINK would help establish a strategic position in the interoperability and oracle infrastructure between its permissioned and public chains, ensuring priority access, staking yields, and reducing dependency risks.
Interestingly, JPMorgan's actions before and after the crash on October 10 are worth noting. Just days before the crash, the bank released a bearish report warning about the vulnerability of crypto-related stocks under geopolitical risks. Although the crash was primarily triggered by external factors, the simultaneous appearance of the bearish report and the liquidity vacuum raises speculation that large institutions may have taken the opportunity to discreetly build their positions.
Financial Infrastructure Institutions (e.g., DTCC, SWIFT)
This is a less likely possibility. Such institutions typically do not hold strategic token reserves. More importantly, if Chainlink were to become a core part of their future infrastructure, DTCC or SWIFT would be unlikely to tolerate an unknown entity controlling 10% of the LINK supply—this would pose an unacceptable systemic risk.
One detail worth noting:
All 48 wallets were created between August and November 2025, with the last one established on November 20—just two days before SWIFT activated the new ISO 20022 standard, of which Chainlink is a participant.
While the timing coincidence does not constitute causal evidence, it is hard to ignore. If LINK is to play an important role in future financial communications, settlements, or interoperability infrastructure, establishing a strategic reserve beforehand is undoubtedly a reasonable long-term strategy.
For institutions aiming for long-term integration rather than short-term speculation, locking in supply in advance can reduce execution risks, mitigate price shocks, and lessen dependence on future market liquidity.
High Net-Worth Individuals
This is extremely unlikely. 100 million LINK is worth over $1 billion, and very few individuals can mobilize that level of funds, especially to concentrate it in a single crypto asset without a clear strategic purpose.
My Perspective
I believe it is almost certain that this is the work of a large institution. Without deep market knowledge and institutional-level execution capabilities, it would be impossible to accumulate 10% of the supply without shaking prices.
Increasing purchases during the liquidity-rich period after the crash on October 10, especially points to institutional behavior. They are well aware that high liquidity allows for frequent purchases without driving up prices. This level of coordination far exceeds the capabilities of typical individual investors.
It is also noteworthy that the accumulated amount is exactly 100 million LINK, precisely one-tenth of the total supply. This indicates that the scale is intentionally set rather than randomly accumulated, reflecting a long-term strategic intent towards the project.
Accumulating 100 million LINK is unlikely to be purely for speculative purposes. This suggests that the token may have actual use cases in the future. The entity seems to be preparing for Chainlink's support of critical financial infrastructure in the future and is building reserves accordingly.
Until the identity of this entity is revealed, uncertainty remains. However, the fact that a single entity may be accumulating 10% of the LINK supply carries significant bullish implications.
What Happens Next?
If the buyer is a large institution, the subsequent impact could be very positive. Other asset management companies and infrastructure providers may rush to establish their own LINK reserves, but replicating this slow, discreet accumulation process is nearly impossible. Later entrants may be forced to buy at high prices, significantly driving up prices.
At the same time, the concentration of risk cannot be ignored. Controlling 10% of the supply means significant influence, and the future actions of this entity, whose intentions are unclear, remain a key variable.
The following points are clear:
- This accumulation is real.
- Its strategy is highly sophisticated.
- The scale involved is unusual.
Whether this is an early layout by a large institution or something else, it is one of the most noteworthy on-chain patterns in LINK's history.
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