Chainlink's Quarterly Unlock Sparks Debate on LINK Price Amid Downtrend

Chainlink's recent quarterly unlock has sparked debate on its price performance. The altcoin has been trading within a strong downtrend since its uptrend collapsed at $8.5, closing at lower lows and reaching a low of $7.7 as of this writing.

The Chainlink team unlocked 21 million LINK worth $166 million, with 18.375 million LINK, worth $144.93 million, deposited into Binance. This move is part of the project's token distribution schedule, but it has attracted market attention despite being a neutral event in terms of its impact on the market.

The unlocked tokens are typically transferred to exchanges for liquidity, sold to fund operations and other activities, or used to reward operators and support staking programs. In this case, 2.62 million LINK, worth $20 million, were transferred to a multisig wallet to distribute rewards to LINK staking users.

Despite the transfer of tokens, Chainlink's price continues to struggle, with demand from institutional investors drying up according to Sosovalue data, which showed zero inflows for nine consecutive days. The altcoin is also experiencing a prolonged stay within the negative zone on the Momentum Shift indicator and remains below the MACD SMA.