Tellor (TRB), a decentralized oracle protocol and Chainlink alternative, has been a top performer in the past few months. Looking at price action, TRB is up 640% in 2023, surging 269% in the past month alone and reversing losses of 2022. A spike in trading volume is behind this resurgence, suggesting bull engagement.

TRB Prices Rallying, Reverses 2022 Losses

With TRB galloping past $44 and 2022 highs, the token has outpaced some of the top coins in the sphere, including XRP and Bitcoin (BTC). For context, Bitcoin is struggling to break above $30,000. On the other hand, XRP has reversed all gains registered following a court ruling declaring XRP as a commodity. TRB is more than 6X from 2023 lows and surging in a crypto winter. 

A look at onchain data shows that though there are hints of retailers taking profits at spot rates, the number of TRB on exchanges has been dropping in the past week. This contraction indicates that retailers and whales could accumulate, adding more TRB. 

An analysis of the top TRB whales with over $1 million of tokens reveals interesting patterns. For instance, a fresh whale, “0x656”, holds 111.89K TRB ($6.06 million), a figure accumulated in the past three weeks. Buying at an average of $28.1, the whale has an unrealized profit of over $2.92 million at spot rates. Another new whale, “0x8f8”, accumulated 65.7K TRB ($3.6 million) in the past five days at an entry price of $34.5. With TRB edging higher, the associated address has an unrealized profit of $1.33 million. 

Moreover, on-chain data shows that these whales mostly received their TRB from Binance and OKX. While prices have been rallying, on-chain trackers reveal that none of the above whales had moved their coins to exchanges. This points to confidence and expectations of more price gains going forward. 

Tellor Rallying Because of Chainlink?

TRB’s rally coincided with SWIFT’s announcement that it had completed its trials leveraging Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) in late August. Then, a SWIFT representative said the goal was to drive interoperability and ensure tokenization reaches its full potential. Days after this news, TRB broke above June highs, cementing its place above $13.

Presently, parallel data suggests that the surge in TRB appears to be driven by fear of missing out, mostly from short-term traders and speculators. IntoTheBlock data on September 27 shows that short-term wallet holders have increased their TRB holdings, with over 72% of TRB holders in the money.

Feature image from Canva, chart from TradingView