Chainlink’s LINK token climbed to $15.30, reaching its highest price of 2026. The move extended its gain since the start of June 2026 to more than 100% and pushed its market capitalization above $11.5 billion.

TradingView data showed the LINK/USDT trading pair on Binance.

Analytics platform Santiment said the rally coincided with a decline in the number of LINK holders, a trend that may point to profit-taking by some retail investors.

Smaller holders take profits

According to Santiment, the number of wallets with a non-zero LINK balance fell to 912,020. The platform said a decline in holders while prices are rising is not necessarily a negative signal and may indicate that large investors are absorbing tokens sold by smaller market participants.

Santiment said the total number of LINK holders nevertheless remains near all-time highs after rising for a prolonged period during 2026.

As LINK advanced, Chainlink introduced CCIP 2.0, an upgrade to its cross-chain interoperability protocol. The new version gives applications more control over the security of cross-chain transfers while retaining Chainlink’s standard verifier network.

According to Santiment, cumulative transfer volume through CCIP has surpassed $24 billion.

Institutional adoption

Santiment said the integration of Chainlink’s infrastructure with financial institutions remains another driver of the ecosystem’s growth.

Coinbase has selected Chainlink as the oracle infrastructure for its tokenized stocks, according to Santiment. The state of Wyoming has also expanded its use of Chainlink technology to support the state-backed FRNT stablecoin.

Santiment said those integrations strengthen Chainlink’s role as an infrastructure provider for tokenized assets and financial applications.

Standard Chartered previously forecast that LINK could rise to $200 by the end of 2030.

Source: Incrypted