The Crypto Desk desk. Editor: Sam Daodu.
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Chainlink (CRYPTO:LINK) would need to rise about 9.6 times from its current price to reach the much-discussed $100 target. LINK currently trades at about $10, down 8.3% over the past week and 17.9% over the past 30 days. Over the last year, its daily close has ranged from a low near $7 on June 30 to a high near $15 on September 28.
Chainlink is an oracle network, meaning it supplies external data, such as asset prices, to blockchains so smart contracts can use it. The idea of a Chainlink $100 target gained momentum after Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) let its crypto clients trade Chainlink on November 9. So what does LINK need to reach $100, and how far is it from that goal?
Market Cap Needed for LINK to Hit $100
To reach $100, Chainlink would require a market cap of around $76.7 billion, calculated by multiplying its price by the number of tokens in circulation. About 767 million LINK tokens circulate, and Chainlink’s market cap stands at about $8 billion, ranking it 17th among cryptocurrencies.
LINK’s all-time high is about $53, reached on May 9, 2021, and it trades about 80% below that peak. A $100 price would be about 1.9 times that all-time high. Additionally, because more tokens circulate now than in 2021, LINK would need a market cap of around $40.6 billion to match its previous high.
LINK’s maximum supply is capped at 1 billion tokens, so about 233 million tokens remain to be released. If all tokens circulated, the fully diluted market cap would reach $100 billion at a $100 price. As more tokens are released, the market cap needed to support any given price also rises, which our look at what 1,000 LINK could be worth by 2028 also covers.
Chainlink’s Reserve and Institutional Pilots Are Still Small Next to a $77 Billion Goal
Chainlink launched its Reserve on August 7, 2025, converting fees from large companies and on-chain activity into LINK tokens, similar to how a company buys back its shares. That month, LINK reached a monthly peak of $28, but the price has since dropped to around $10, suggesting the Reserve’s steady buying hasn’t been enough to offset selling pressure.
Chainlink has about $1.8 billion of total value locked, the dollar value of tokens deposited in its contracts. That amount is about 2% of the $77 billion market cap target, so both the locked value and fee revenue would need to increase many times over.
Several major financial firms are exploring Chainlink’s capabilities. Moody’s Ratings, a subsidiary of Moody’s (NYSE:MCO), completed a testnet pilot, a trial on a practice network where no actual funds move, that used Chainlink’s cross-chain protocol for credit assessment data on several blockchains. Archax also picked Chainlink to price its tokenized Treasuries. However, a pilot generates no fee income for the Reserve until it goes live.
Chainlink ETF Demand Has Stalled Despite Schwab Access
A spot ETF is an exchange-traded fund that holds actual LINK tokens. As of November 10, U.S. spot Chainlink ETFs had cumulative net inflows of $176.4 million, down from $179.6 million on October 15, according to SoSoValue. The funds have since seen some outflows, including $1.8 million on October 30, with zero net flows on most other days.
The value of the ETFs’ holdings dropped from $230.1 million on October 12 to about $180.2 million. Although Schwab’s new trading access provides an additional retail buying channel, LINK posted its lowest close of the past 30 days on November 10, just a day after Schwab’s launch.
Chainlink FAQs
Will Chainlink recover?
LINK has risen 16.7% over the last 90 days but has fallen 32.3% over the past year. A close above $15, roughly 44% higher than its current price, would signal the start of a recovery.
Is Chainlink a good investment?
That depends on whether the Reserve’s buying and institutional usage can outpace new token releases. Chainlink’s Reserve updates and SoSoValue’s ETF data track both.
Can Chainlink Reach $100?
LINK looks unlikely to hit $100 in this market cycle. It would require a market cap close to $76.7 billion while ETF inflows have stalled, and it still trades about 80% below its 2021 peak. The first step would be LINK moving back above its 50-day moving average of around $12, a 15% increase, followed by the September high of $15 and its $53 all-time peak before $100 comes into view.
The first sign of progress would be LINK closing above $15, with cumulative ETF inflows topping the October high of $179.6 million. With ETF flows flat and LINK trading near its 200-day moving average around $10, the June low near $7, about 33% lower, could come back into play.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
