The Chainlink team was suspected of large-scale liquidation of LINK tokens. For a month and a half, the project capitalization decreased by $600 million, Trustnodes reports.
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On July 6, a recruitment message was posted on the project’s Twitter page, which, according to some observers, was the beginning of the dump.
In particular, it contained the following: they value the support and understanding of thе community as their staff grows and they will do everything possible to ensure that the plan is implemented responsibly, carefully managing the company's resources, capital and LINK. Following this message, a schedule was circulated on social networks showing the alleged token sales of 700,000 LINK at each price rebound after reaching a peak at the end of June.
According to Etherscan, 14 transactions of 700,000 LINK were made, which totaled 9.8 million tokens, or about $30 million.
After going through a small chain of addresses, these tokens were sold on Binance, noted in Trustnodes.
Observers believe that at the end of June the daily trading volumes of ChainLink on the Binance exchange were artificially boosted. So, with a capitalization of only $1.4 billion, this indicator amounted to $863 million. According to some, the price movement chart for the mentioned period looks unnatural, especially considering that volumes in favor of sales were recorded on one of the green candles. There is a possibility that the unknown wanted to provoke FOMO, but could not achieve the goal.
Some believe that the message about the expansion of the staff was only an attempt to hide the large-scale liquidation of tokens.
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It is worth noting that in 2017 Chainlink raised $32 million through the sale of 350 million LINK through an ICO. At the same time, the team saved 650 million LINK for the further development of the project.
Recall, according to a recent analysis of the ICO market, Chainlink entered the top five most successful ICOs in terms of growth in bitcoin.