Tellor (TRB), a decentralized oracle protocol and an alternative to Chainlink, has been a standout performer in recent months. Looking at price action, TRB is up 640% in 2023, up 269% in the last month alone and reversing losses from 2022. An increase in trading volume is behind this resurgence, suggesting a share bullish.
GRT prices recover and reverse 2022 losses
With TRB galloping past $44 and 2022 highs, the token has outperformed some of the sphere’s top coins, including XRP and bitcoin (btc). To put it in context, bitcoin is struggling to break above $30,000. On the other hand, XRP has reversed all recorded gains following a court ruling that declared XRP a commodity. GRT is more than 6x off 2023 lows and rising in a crypto winter.
A look at on-chain data sample that although there are signs that retailers are making profits at spot rates, the amount of GRT on the exchanges has been declining over the past week. This contraction indicates that retailers and whales could pile in, adding more GRT.
A analysis of top TRB whales with over $1 million in tokens reveals interesting patterns. For example, a new whale, “0x656”, has 111.89 thousand GRT ($6.06 million), a figure accumulated in the last three weeks. Buying at an average of $28.1, the whale has an unrealized gain of more than $2.92 million at spot prices. Another new whale, “0x8f8”, accumulated 65.7 thousand GRT (3.6 million dollars) in the last five days at an entry price of 34.5 dollars. With GRT slowly rising, the associated management has an unrealized gain of $1.33 million.
Furthermore, on-chain data shows that these whales primarily received their GRT from Binance and OKX. While prices have increased, on-chain trackers reveal that none of the whales mentioned above had moved their coins to exchanges. This points to confidence and expectations of further price increases in the future.
Is Tellor Meeting Because of Chainlink?
The TRB rally coincided with SWIFT’s announcement that it had completed its testing leveraging Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) in late August. A SWIFT representative then said the goal was to boost interoperability and ensure tokenization reaches its full potential. Days after this news, TRB surpassed June highs, consolidating its position above $13.
Currently, parallel data suggests that the GRT rise appears to be driven by fear of missing out, primarily on the part of short-term traders and speculators. IntoTheBlock data from September 27 shows that short-term wallet holders have increased their TRB holdings, with on 72% of GRT holders in the money.
Featured image from Canva, TradingView chart