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The immediate concern is not simply that Chainlink is approaching $12. Its latest intraday low sits almost directly on a major Fibonacci retracement, leaving little distance between the current price and a potentially important technical breakdown.

Chainlink’s Former Uptrend Has Turned Into Resistance

$LINK’s recovery from August carried the cryptocurrency from approximately $8 to above $15 by late September. Throughout much of that advance, price action followed an ascending channel, with successive rebounds maintaining a rising support line.

That structure has since broken.

Following the late-September peak, $LINK began forming lower highs inside a descending channel. Attempts to recover have encountered selling pressure before reaching previous highs, while the former rising trendline no longer provides reliable support.

Thursday’s intraday low of $11.920 brought $LINK back toward the lower end of its recent trading range. The price subsequently recovered to $12.128 but remained marginally below the horizontal level near $12.14. With the daily candle still forming, it remains unclear whether buyers can reclaim that area before the session closes.

An established horizontal area around $12.14 adds another layer to the setup. Previously associated with buying interest, that level is now being tested from below at the time of the screenshot.

A daily close back above it would suggest that buyers have defended the nearby retracement zone. Failure to recover would leave the market more exposed to another test of $11.91.

Neither outcome is confirmed while the October 15 candle remains open.

Falling Open Interest Changes the Interpretation

The derivatives market offers a useful counterpoint to the bearish chart.

According to information from Coinalyze $LINK’s aggregate open interest declined 7.25% over 24 hours to $275 million, with the reported exposure concentrated entirely in perpetual contracts.

Binance held approximately $110.6 million in outstanding positions, followed by Bybit at $70.1 million and Hyperliquid at $58.4 million. Together, the three exchanges accounted for nearly 87% of the total.

The decline in open interest is significant because it suggests that outstanding exposure has contracted during the price retreat.

That differs from a sell-off accompanied by rapidly expanding open interest, which could indicate that traders are establishing additional directional positions.

Here, the available evidence is more consistent with a reduction in existing exposure. However, open interest alone cannot distinguish voluntary position closures from forced liquidations or identify whether new short positions are being opened.

Trading activity has not disappeared. The supplied futures-volume heatmap showed Binance recording $175.23 million in turnover and MEXC $101.71 million.

The contrast between active trading and shrinking outstanding exposure suggests considerable repositioning, although the two datasets do not establish precisely which transactions caused the decline in open interest.

Long Liquidations Point to Bullish Deleveraging

Liquidation figures provide a clearer picture of which traders were under pressure.

According to Coinglass, over the latest 24 hours, $LINK liquidations totaled $2.09 million, including approximately $2.03 million in long positions and $54,760 in shorts.

Longs therefore represented roughly 97% of forced closures.

The imbalance supports the interpretation that leveraged bullish positions were particularly vulnerable during the decline.

Still, the liquidation total is small relative to aggregate open interest. It would be inaccurate to attribute the entire 7.25% contraction in outstanding positions to forced selling.

The more defensible conclusion is that Chainlink is undergoing a reduction in speculative exposure, with liquidations forming one identifiable component of that adjustment.

RSI Weakens as the $11.91 Level Comes Into Focus

Momentum indicators reinforce the deterioration in $LINK’s daily structure.

The Relative Strength Index stood at 41.57, below its displayed moving average of 50.75. That indicates weakening momentum, although the indicator remains above the conventional oversold threshold of 30.

For the next sessions, three price areas deserve attention.

The first is the $12.14 horizontal zone, which $LINK would need to reclaim to demonstrate renewed buying interest.

The immediate downside reference is $11.91, corresponding to the 0.5 Fibonacci level and closely aligned with Thursday’s intraday low. A daily close below this area would strengthen the bearish outlook and shift attention toward earlier price activity around $11.

Conversely, reclaiming $12.14 would provide an initial sign of stabilization, with the 0.618 Fibonacci level at $12.84 becoming the next upside reference. However, a broader recovery would require $LINK to overcome the descending channel’s resistance rather than merely rebound from its recent low.

By contrast, a decisive close below $11.91 accompanied by expanding open interest would warrant closer examination of whether new positioning is reinforcing the decline.

The current data does not establish either scenario. For now, Chainlink remains in a corrective structure, with weakening momentum and reduced derivatives exposure placing greater importance on how price behaves around the latest support test.

According to the announcement, the requirement is straightforward: participants must show Rakuten Wallet staff a screen displaying their $SHIB holdings in the Rakuten Wallet application. The exchange said it would distribute the giveaway items to everyone who meets the requirement, without exceptions.

The “real $SHIB coins” represent a physical metal souvenir coin previously launched earlier this year. In July 2026, Rakuten Wallet announced the creation of the first physical Shiba Inu ($SHIB) coin of its kind, being the first to use sandblasting technology, known as a blast finish. The physical $SHIB coin has no technical connection to the blockchain.

As reported, Rakuten Wallet distributed ‘Shib coins’ at its Fukuoka event and said at the time that it would repeat the same at its seminars in Sapporo and Osaka this October.

Crypto exchange Rakuten Wallet continues to demonstrate support for Shiba Inu after adding the meme coin to its lineup in April.

$SHIB price

At the time of writing, $SHIB was down 3.78% in the last 24 hours to $0.00000494 as the broader crypto market saw significant selling pressure, as Wednesday’s inflation data revived concerns that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates this month.

Data released Wednesday showed consumer prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months through September, up from 3.4% in August and above economists’ expectations. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, climbed 2.6%, accelerating from 2.4% the previous month.

Losses worsened early Thursday, with $972.26 million in futures positions liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data, while Shiba Inu entered its fourth day of decline from October 12 to hit an intraday low of $0.000004811 at press time.

Crypto analyst Eric Nicholas Freund, citing Arkham data, suggested that Hayes may have resumed altcoin purchases after a long hiatus. Freund estimated that purchases began before October 14th for $AERO, October 15th for $PENDLE, and October 10th for $ZAMA. The analyst also suggested that Hayes might promote these assets on social media in the near future.

There’s Activity Among Whales, Too!

Lookonchain reported that whales were buying at the dip. According to the data, the whale with the address “0x8E8b,” which previously sold 2,050 Ethereum ($4.93 million) and made a profit of $1.08 million, bought back 6,010 $ETH ($14.23 million) today.

Another whale missed out on a potential $13.5 million profit by selling early. According to Lookonchain, the whale with the address 0x68Ef had purchased a total of 6.76 million $BTW altcoins but sold them early, receiving only about $85,000. However, considering the current price of $BTW, if they hadn’t sold, the value of their $BTW holdings would have been around $13.5 million. This means the large investor missed out on a potential profit of approximately $13.415 million.

“0x68Ef Whale must be angry at itself.”

He acquired a total of 6.76M $BTW but sold them too early for 85K. That 6.76M $BTW is now worth $13.5 million. He missed out on enough money to retire!”

According to the whale tracking platform TradingBeats, a whale starting with the initials 0x007d opened a long position of 3,000 $ETH using 25x leverage. The data shows that the average entry price was approximately $2,400, the current position value is around $7.05 million, the unrealized loss is approximately $150,000, and the position return is approximately -53%.

Lastly, 0xDD6A, a prominent short trader on Aster DEX who capitalized on the market downturn, made over $6.4 million in profit! Currently holding short positions with 20x leverage on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin, the trader’s total position size has reached $24.6 million, with a win rate of 100%.

*This is not investment advice.