LINK surges to 2021 levels as Trump’s World Liberty buys more Chainlink tokens

Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial just increased its holdings of Chainlink’s LINK token.

The project purchased another $1 million worth of LINK late Thursday, data shows, for the second straight day, increasing its LINK stash to $2 million worth of tokens. It additionally brought $246,000 worth of Aave’s AAVE, taking total token holdings to $1.2 million.

LINK is now World Liberty Financial’s fourth-largest holding after ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and tether (USDT).

Backed by the Trump family, World Liberty Financial is a unified platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and transact with stablecoins. WLFI serves as a governance token for the platform.

It uses data provider Chainlink's services for better integrating with the wider crypto ecosystem. Chainlink supports the platform by providing crucial pricing data and cross-chain interoperability infrastructure, per a November report.

Chainlink bridges blockchains and off-chain systems, providing smart contracts with access to real-world data, external APIs, and other off-chain resources. LINK tokens, among other are used to pay node operators for their services in retrieving and preparing off-chain data or performing computations.

Part of investor demand for LINK tokens is directly tied to the utility and adoption of Chainlink's oracle services.

And the market is positively reacting to the Trump-linked purchases — LINK prices are up 22% in the past 7 days and more than 130% since World Liberty Financial first onboarded Chainlink, helping the token reach price levels last seen in early 2021.

LINK neared $30 in Asian morning hours Friday, data shows, with open interest (OI) on the token’s futures zooming to record highs above $860 million.

OI refers to the number of unsettled bets in futures markets. A bump in prices alongside rising OI is generally considered a bullish sign, as it suggests investors are willing to commit new capital to the expectation that the price will continue to rise.