Summary ChainLink has outperformed the S&P 500, driven by real-world use cases and major partnerships like ICE, Mastercard, and World Liberty Financial. Recent launches—Chainlink Reserve, Data Streams for equities, and automated compliance engine—position LINK for institutional adoption and long-term growth. Technically, LINK shows bullish momentum with positive RSI and MACD signals, suggesting further upside, but profit-taking is advised at key levels. Risks include competition and cycle unpredictability, but ChainLink’s leadership and ecosystem integration support a positive long-term outlook. I'm providing an update on the cryptocurrency ChainLink USD ( LINK-USD ), which I wrote about back in December 2024 . ChainLink increased about 17% since my article was published, significantly outperforming the S&P 500's ( SPY ) 9% gain. My theory back in December was that ChainLink was likely to perform well along with Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) and the other main cryptocurrencies as part of this BTC halving cycle. I also pointed out ChainLink's real-life use cases as long-term growth drivers for its underlying price. New Developments for ChainLink ChainLink, as the standard for onchain finance, had multiple developments in 2025 that demonstrate its real-life use cases. These use cases can help drive the price of the underlying ChainLink coin higher as more investors become aware of LINK as an investment and bid up the price. On August 11, 2025, ChainLink and Intercontinental Exchange ( ICE ) announced that high-quality FX and precious metals rates from ICE Consolidate Feed will serve as a contributor to the derived data set that Chainlink Data Streams provides to over 2,000 applications asset managers, leading banks, and infrastructure in the ChainLink ecosystem. This marks a milestone for ChainLink to have a path towards the adoption of mainstream onchain finance. ICE has a market-leading data feed for numerous precious metals and currencies, which provides a new level of reliability to onchain markets. ICE also supports new types of tokenized assets and products. ICE serves as one of multiple high-quality data providers on Chainlink Data Streams, which supplies DeFi (decentralized finance) applications with access to tamper-resistant data. ChainLink's data standard handles the rigorous requirements of traditional capital markets and unlocks a new class of institutional-grade applications with ICE's data. The demand for tokenized real-world assets is expected to reach $30.1 trillion by 2034 . This market is still in its infancy and was worth about $5 billion in early 2024. Chainlink Data Streams helps organizations tap into this large opportunity by providing on-demand access to secure and reliable high-frequency market data. This allows onchain applications to leverage ChainLink's institutional-grade infrastructure. This provides fast, user-friendly experiences. On August 7, 2025, ChainLink announced the launch of the Chainlink Reserve , which is a new upgrade of a strategic onchain reserve of LINK tokens. This is designed to support the sustainability and long-term growth of the ChainLink Network. This is accomplished by accumulating LINK tokens using offchain revenue from large enterprises that are adopting the ChainLink standard and from onchain service usage. ChainLink Co-Founder, Sergey Nazarov, stated: "The launch of the Chainlink Reserve marks a pivotal evolution in Chainlink, establishing a strategic LINK reserve funded using offchain revenue, as well as from onchain service usage. Demand for the Chainlink standard has already created hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, substantially from large enterprises. The Chainlink Reserve provides a clear answer to how offchain revenue and large scale institutional adoption of the Chainlink standard will be connected back to the growth, security and sustainability for those standards." On August 4, 2025, ChainLink announced the launch of Chainlink Data Streams for U.S. Equities and ETFs. This is real-time, high-throughput market data that is now available onchain to power the next generation of tokenized financial products. This is being adopted by DeFi protocols: GMX, Kamino, and GMX-Solana. Chainlink Data Streams enables tokenized stock trading, synthetic ETFs, and perpetual futures with institutional-grade reliability. On June 30, 2025, ChainLink launched the automated compliance engine [ACE] . This was done in partnership with Apex Group, ERC-3643 Association, and GLEIF. ACE is a unified and modular standard to solve all onchain compliance issues and bring institutional capital onchain. This is designed to support traditional and decentralized finance. ACE enables the creation of compliance-focused digital assets/services across private and public blockchains. This sets up the potential for over $100 trillion of institutional capital to enter the onchain economy. ChainLink partnered with Mastercard ( MA ) in June to enable over 300 billion cardholders to purchase crypto directly onchain. This is accomplished through a secure fiat-to-crypto conversion. This combines Mastercard's trusted global payments network with ChainLink's secure interoperability infrastructure. This development removes barriers so that mainstream users can access the onchain economy. World Liberty Financial collaborated with ChainLink in May to accelerate the adoption of the world's fastest-growing stablecoin, USD1. This involves the integration of ChainLink's Cross Chain Interoperability Protocol [CCIP] with World Liberty Financial to expand access to the institutional-grade stablecoin by enabling secure transfers of USD1 across blockchain networks that would otherwise act as silos of value. ChainLink enables USD1 to move seamlessly between Ethereum ( ETH-USD ) and BNB Chain networks with a rigorous plan for additional blockchain integrations in the future. Those were most of the recent developments. However, there were others from earlier in the year that can be reviewed from the first link 'multiple developments' in this section. Technical Perspective ChainLink (LINK-USD) Monthly Price Chart w/ RSI & MACD (TradingView) It's important to keep an eye on the technicals for LINK since we can't track earnings and valuation like a standard company. The price of ChainLink tends to be correlated with Bitcoin's halving cycle. Since there are sharp drops in each cycle, I think it is wise to lock in profits near the peak price in every cycle. Then, investors can get back in near the price bottoms. It might be difficult to time it perfectly, but having a long-term view on the monthly chart makes it feasible. The monthly chart above shows how LINK peaked in the last cycle after the price moved into an extreme overbought condition when the RSI moved above 80. What was tricky about the last cycle was that there was another pump from July through October after sharp declines in May and June. The RSI is currently in bullish territory as it is above the 50 level but still below the overbought area above 70. The MACD is showing a bullish crossover as the blue line crossed above the red signal line. This is confirmed by the green histogram bar appearing after the recent red bars. This shows that a new positive trend has formed. This suggests that there could be more upside runway for LINK over the next few months. Selling when the monthly RSI moves above 80 is probably a good time to lock in profits. Profit-taking tended to take place at this level each time that occurred. This can be cross-checked with the MACD as the histogram bars turn from dark green to light green and shorten in length. The buying point after the last cycle occurred when the RSI moved down to about the 40 level and when the MACD histogram bars turned from red to pink and shortened in length. This was when the price of LINK dropped to the single digits. Risks for Investing in ChainLink There is no guarantee that the past patterns for LINK will repeat like they did in the past. So, it might be wise to use the price action of Bitcoin as a guide, which tends to have more consistent patterns. My latest Bitcoin analysis can be read here . Of course, there is no guarantee that using Bitcoin as a guide for price peaks and bottoms will repeat the patterns of past cycles. Investing is about weighing risks while attempting to maximize gains. So, sometimes the higher-risk assets yield higher total returns, but it could also lead to losses. ChainLink could lose ground due to competition. It is possible that one or more of ChainLink's competitors offers more attractive technology that is adopted by large players. ChainLink competes with Pyth ( PYTH-USD ), Chronicle, Switchboard, and WINkLink (WCoin USD) ( WIN-USD ). I doubt that these competitors will overtake ChainLink in this space, but the possibility is there. ChainLink's Outlook I like the numerous real-world developments that ChainLink is involved with. ChainLink has partnerships with many large companies and organizations. This shows that LINK is a leader in the space with the potential for strong future growth. I will watch for the RSI to peak again in the overbought area on the RSI and loss of momentum on the MACD (shortening of the green bars) to gauge a selling point for this cycle. The current price action suggests that this could be the beginning of the next leg higher in this cycle.
