Chainlink: How long can bulls defend LINK’s $11.90 support?

As sentiment begins to shift following U.S. President Donald Trump’s removal of tariffs on European countries, Chainlink [LINK] is now eyeing a strong upside rally.

This bullish outlook is further reinforced by traders’ strong conviction in long-leveraged positions, favorable price action, and Chainlink’s position as one of the top DeFi projects in terms of development.

Recently, on-chain analytics firm Santiment disclosed that Chainlink topped DeFi projects in terms of development activity.

This suggests that Chainlink’s developers are more active than those of other DeFi projects, indicating the protocol is continuously being built and improved, with stronger security and reliability.

This level of development activity strengthens investors’ long-term confidence in the project.

On the 22nd of January, LINK was trading at $12.40, up 1.05% over the past 24 hours. Despite this modest gain, traders have shown strong interest in the asset, as trading volume jumped 26% to $522.29 million.

Chainlink: Price action and upcoming levels

LINK, on the daily chart, appeared to be hovering near a strong key support at $11.90 at the time of writing. This level has a solid history of price reversals and has been respected since November 2025.

Source: TradingView

During this period, LINK has recorded more than four reversals from this zone and now appears poised to repeat its historical behavior once again.

Based on the current price action, if LINK holds above the $11.90 level, as it has in the past, it could see a strong 15% upside move and may reach the $14 level in the coming days.

As of the time of writing, LINK remained below the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), which suggests that bearish momentum remains intact, and the price could face continued downside pressure in the near term.

However, in the past, when LINK traded below the 50 EMA, it still recorded upside moves. It will be interesting to see whether history repeats itself this time.

Traders eye long-leveraged positions

At the same time, intraday traders appeared to be following historical trends, as bets on long-leveraged positions continued to rise, according to derivatives data from CoinGlass.

LINK’s Exchange Liquidation Map showed that traders were heavily over-leveraged at $11.88 on the lower side (support) and $12.72 on the upper side (resistance).

At these levels, traders have built $7.81 million worth of long-leveraged positions and $2.08 million worth of short-leveraged positions.

This clearly indicates that intraday traders are currently bullish on LINK and strongly believe the asset is unlikely to fall below the $11.88 level anytime soon.

Source: CoinGlass

Final Thoughts

• Chainlink looks poised for a 15% upside move if it sustains above the key support level of $11.90.
• Intraday traders’ bullish bets, the recent removal of tariffs on European countries, and strong DeFi development activity further reinforced LINK’s bullish outlook.