Chainlink developers have dumped some $600 million worth of LINK tokens on the market, causing the price to collapse from recent highs, according to website Trustnodes. They accuse Chainlink the team of pushing the token price lower with after its mammoth run in June which saw it rise almost 5x, but LINK supporters have since come out and defended the project, accusing Trustnodes of misreading the data and causing FUD.
Half a Billion Wiped Out as Chainlink Devs Dumphttps://t.co/76KOgbgyj5
— Trustnodes (@TrustNodes) August 11, 2019
Chainlink’s 700,000 LINK Moves Cause Suspicion
Trustnodes asserts that Chainlink has been selling blocks of 700,000 LINK tokens at a time on a regular basis, all of which has added up to over 10 million since the price peaked at the end of June, reminding us that the team retained 65% (650 million) of the one billion LINK tokens that were minted at ICO. These regular blocks of sales have supposedly pushed the price lower, to the detriment of regular holders who have watched their portfolio values plummet 50% in six weeks through no fault of their own.
I’m no expert. And I make no guarantees. But every single time they’ve done pulled 700k $LINK from the dev wallet, they dump it and the price goes down. No reason to think this will be any different than the last 6 times.
— King Of Crypto Harts (@OwenHart) July 18, 2019
Chainlink Blog Post Suggested Imminent Sales
After Chainlink engaged in what Trustnodes call a “marketing blitz” that saw LINK rocket from $1 to $4.60 in one month, the Chainlink team released a blog post in early July in which they said they would “expand the number of people working on Chainlink” and that they would “responsibly, carefully managing the company’s resources, capital and LINK.” Trustnodes took this to mean that the team was “basically telling the public they will begin selling some of their huge holdings”, before they dive into an analysis of the LINK/USDT chart below:
That last big green candle is 29th of June. Then we have this kind of proportional wicks. Price oscillates wildly, but kind of settles on what presumably is the “real” activity.
Supporters Question Trustnodes’ Data Analysis
Chainlink supporters project have responded by calling the article “garbage click bait”, “FUD (that) has been de-bunked time and time again” and “weak”. Some have suggested that the blocks of 700,000 tokens have been used to run nodes, while others have said that the project has “only 30 million USD more worth of tokens, a very small responsible amount.” One such supporter, David Miller, posted a detailed reply on Twitter that looked at seven reasons why the article was incorrect, citing inaccurate ICO information and trading data as well as suggesting that the article was simply an attempt to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt for unknown reasons.
I’m no expert. And I make no guarantees. But every single time they’ve done pulled 700k $LINK from the dev wallet, they dump it and the price goes down. No reason to think this will be any different than the last 6 times.
— King Of Crypto Harts (@OwenHart) July 18, 2019
Chainlink has so far offered no official response to the article, which might itself show how seriously they are taking the arguments put forward by Trustnodes.
