Chainlink Reserve buys 94,500 LINK as US ETFs see outflows

What is documented: the Chainlink Reserve added another 94,500 LINK on November 5 and now holds around 6.57 million tokens, while investors pulled roughly $1.06 million out of the two US spot ETFs on LINK on November 6. Our assessment follows further down: the reserve's steady buying is a structural signal, but at its current size it has so far not been able to counter the downtrend in the price.

Chainlink trades at $10.72 on Sunday morning, or €9.62, according to CoinGecko. That puts the token 1.2 percent below its level on Saturday morning, 8.6 percent below the price a week ago and 16.7 percent below where it stood 30 days ago. It remains almost 80 percent short of its all-time high of $52.70 from May 2021. Two flows of money are currently running in opposite directions in this market, and both can be put into numbers.

Chainlink price on Sunday morning: $10.72 and a weekly loss of 8.6 percent

The week's chart shows how thin the recent recovery attempts have been. On Thursday, November 5, LINK climbed to $11.62 in the morning and fell back to $10.65 by the early evening of the same day. That is a range of almost nine percent within a single trading day. Since then the price has moved between $10.70 and $11.00, and on Sunday morning it sits at the lower edge of that band.

The broader market offers no tailwind. Bitcoin is at around $75,800, 2.7 percent below the previous week, and the Alternative.me Fear and Greed Index reads 28 on Sunday, which signals fear. Over the week, Chainlink has lost a good three times as much as Bitcoin. Trading volume across all exchanges came to around $153 million over the past 24 hours.

Chainlink Reserve: 94,500 LINK on November 5, 6.57 million in holdings

The Chainlink Reserve is an on-chain stockpile of LINK that the Chainlink network builds from its own revenue. It was launched on August 7, 2025. Its holdings are public on the Chainlink Reserve dashboard, and every deposit can be traced on the blockchain.

On November 5, according to data from the analytics service Onchain Lens, 94,500 LINK were added, worth around $1.02 million at the time. That lifted the holdings to about 6.57 million LINK, valued at around $73.9 million at the time of the deposit. At Sunday morning's price, the figure is around $70.4 million. In the 30 days to November 5, the same analysis shows 447,400 LINK flowing into the reserve, or around $5.3 million.

How large is that relative to the market? According to CoinGecko, around 766.8 million LINK are in circulation. The reserve therefore holds just over 0.86 percent of the circulating supply. The November 5 purchase equals about 0.67 percent of the weekend's daily volume. That barely registers in the order book, but over a month it adds up to a steady buyer that does not sell.

No sales announced for years

That last point is exactly what sets the reserve apart from a fund. In its announcement from August 2025, Chainlink writes that it expects no withdrawals from the reserve for several years. The contract on the blockchain also has a timelock of several days before any withdrawal can be executed. A sudden sell-off from the reserve would therefore be visible in advance.

Payment Abstraction: how fees turn into LINK in the reserve

Payment Abstraction is the technology Chainlink uses to convert payments for its services into LINK. Users of Chainlink services do not necessarily pay in LINK; they often pay in gas tokens such as ether or in stablecoins. These payments are swapped into LINK via decentralised exchanges, and the proceeds flow into the reserve. Since launch, this has also applied to revenue from enterprise clients that is settled off-chain. According to Chainlink, half of the fees from the staking-secured SVR services are also set to go into it.

The mechanism has a simple consequence: the more banks, exchanges and DeFi protocols pay for price data, data streams or cross-chain transfers via CCIP, the more LINK the network buys on the market. If you want to understand what lies behind these services, our explainer What is Chainlink? covers the basics. One date that will matter here falls in the first quarter of 2027: that is when the US securities depository DTCC and Chainlink plan to launch a dedicated blockchain for collateral management, as both presented at the Sibos 2026 banking conference. The original plan was the fourth quarter of 2026.

LINK ETFs in the US: $1.06 million outflow on November 6

On the other side are the two exchange-traded spot funds on LINK in the US, the Grayscale Chainlink Trust ETF under the ticker GLNK and the Bitwise Chainlink ETF under the ticker CLNK. A spot ETF holds the coin itself and tracks its price on the stock exchange. On Friday, November 6, the two funds together lost a net $1.06 million. That is according to data from SoSoValue, as reported by TokenPost. The entire outflow came from GLNK.

Before that, the two funds had reported neither inflows nor outflows for four consecutive trading days. Since launch, net inflows total $176.40 million, and assets under management stood at $189.55 million on Friday. That equals 2.29 percent of Chainlink's total market capitalisation. Shares worth $2.61 million changed hands that day. On the same day, the spot funds on Solana and Hyperliquid also recorded outflows, while Zcash funds took in $1.77 million. Fund trading pauses over the weekend, and the next figures arrive after the market close on Monday.

Reserve versus ETFs: which moves more LINK in 30 days

Put the two flows side by side and the picture is mixed. In the 30 days to November 5, the reserve bought LINK worth around $5.3 million. At $1.06 million, the fund outflow on November 6 is roughly the size of a single weekly purchase by the reserve. One day of outflows therefore almost cancels out a weekly purchase on paper.

In terms of holdings, the funds are well ahead. With $189.55 million under management, the ETFs hold a good two and a half times what the reserve is worth at Sunday morning's price. The difference lies in behaviour: investors can redeem fund shares on any trading day, and the issuer must then sell or deliver LINK. The reserve, by contrast, buys on a fixed pattern and has announced it will not sell for years.

Metric	Chainlink Reserve	US spot ETFs on LINK
Latest move	+94,500 LINK on November 5 (around $1.02 million)	-$1.06 million net on November 6
Holdings	around 6.57 million LINK, around $70.4 million on Sunday morning	$189.55 million in fund assets
Total inflows	447,400 LINK in 30 days	$176.40 million since launch
Share of market	just over 0.86 percent of circulating LINK	2.29 percent of market capitalisation
Can it sell?	not planned for years, timelock in the contract	on any trading day through redemptions

The share of market in the table is our own calculation from the holdings cited and the circulating supply of around 766.8 million LINK according to CoinGecko.

Since November 6: the $10.26 level has held

Our article of November 6 on the Chainlink price after the 7.6 percent drop asked whether the $10.26 level would hold. At the time, LINK cost $10.84 early on Friday morning, and long bets in the futures market were growing despite the decline. Since then, the price has not touched $10.26 again. The lowest level since Friday is $10.72, exactly where it stands on Sunday morning.

Two things are new since Friday: the first fund outflow after four quiet trading days, and confirmation of the November 5 reserve purchase by several on-chain analyses. What has not changed is the gap to the moving averages. LINK continues to trade below its 50-day line and below its 100-day line.

Chainlink levels: $11.62 above, $10.08 at the 200-day line

Our editorial team calculated the following levels itself from CoinGecko's daily closing prices over the past 200 days. A moving average is the mean of the closing prices over the stated number of days; it smooths out the swings and shows the direction of the trend.

• $11.62: the intraday high of November 5. A close above it would fully recover Thursday evening's pullback.
• $11.51: the 100-day line. It sits just below Thursday's high and forms a zone with it where the price recently failed.
• $12.58: the 50-day line. Only above this level would the short-term downtrend be broken.
• $10.65: the low of November 5. It is only seven cents below Sunday morning's price.
• $10.26: the level from our article of November 6, which has held so far.
• $10.08: the 200-day line. This is the long-term average; a close below it would also cloud the long-term picture.

Where the price could head over a horizon of months and which targets analysts cite is collected on our Chainlink prediction page. The levels above refer to the next few days.

Our assessment: the reserve supports the foundation but does not yet carry the price

In our view, comparing the two flows shows two things. In the reserve's favour, it buys from real revenue: 447,400 LINK in 30 days are not a marketing promise but fees that users paid for Chainlink services, and the purchases are documented on the blockchain. Against a quick impact on the price is the scale. A weekly purchase of around $1 million compares with daily volume of around $153 million, and a single day of ETF outflows is enough to offset it.

The conclusion for now: as long as the broader market trades in fear and Bitcoin slides for a fifth straight week, sentiment will drive the LINK price more than the reserve's buying. The reserve only becomes a factor for the price once revenue rises markedly, for example through the planned launch of the collateral blockchain with DTCC. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell. An investment in LINK can result in a total loss.

Chainlink ETN instead of a US ETF: flat-rate tax instead of the holding period

Retail investors in Germany generally cannot buy the two US funds GLNK and CLNK because they lack the key information document required under the EU's PRIIPs regulation. Anyone in Germany who wants to hold LINK through a security turns to exchange-traded notes, known as ETNs or ETPs. Our guide buying a crypto ETF in Germany gives an overview of this route.

The tax difference is large. Gains on LINK held directly are tax-free under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act if more than one year passes between purchase and sale. Within the holding period, gains of up to €1,000 a year remain tax-free under an exemption threshold; if you exceed it, the entire gain becomes taxable. Gains from an ETN, by contrast, are subject to the 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax plus solidarity surcharge, 26.375 percent in total, plus church tax where applicable, regardless of how long you hold. The only deduction there is the saver's allowance of €1,000.

A worked example: on a €2,000 price gain, you pay no tax on LINK held directly after 14 months. With an ETN, €527.50 is due if your saver's allowance is already used up, and €263.75 if it is still available. If you want to offset losses from the current decline against gains, you can only do so with directly held LINK within the holding period. Crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers record the purchase date of every tranche automatically, so you do not have to work out the deadline for each purchase by hand.

How to buy in Germany: LINK through an exchange with MiCA authorisation

Since the transition periods ended, EU-wide by July 1, 2026 at the latest, crypto service providers serving customers in Germany need authorisation under the EU's MiCA regulation. For buying LINK, that means checking before you deposit whether your exchange is listed in the register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. Our article on buying Chainlink in Germany from October 27 names five authorised exchanges with trading fees between 0.15 and 1.875 percent per purchase. If you want to compare providers by fees, custody and withdrawal options, you will find them in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

One point matters for the holding period: the clock restarts with every purchase. If you buy in instalments over several months, each tranche has its own date from which the gain is tax-free. If you switch exchanges or move to your own wallet, the period continues to run as long as you keep the original purchase records.

Chainlink Reserve: below $10.26 the buying counts for little

The reserve keeps buying, the funds are losing money, and the price is looking for a floor. Three steps help put the coming days into context:

1. Check the next fund data for GLNK and CLNK on Monday evening. A second straight day of outflows would confirm the pressure. If you would rather buy directly than through a fund, compare the authorised providers among the regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Watch the zone between $10.65 and $10.26. A daily close below $10.26 opens the way to the 200-day line at $10.08. Whether holding for years pays off in tax terms is something you can calculate with a tool from our comparison of tax tools.
3. Do not leave LINK you hold for the long term on an exchange permanently. A hardware wallet keeps the keys offline; models and prices are listed in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of November 8, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)