Investors may be overlooking one of the most important pieces of crypto infrastructure, according to crypto asset manager Bitwise.
Chainlink (LINK), the 11th-largest crypto asset with a market capitalization near $10 billion, is among Bitwise’s highest-conviction investments. Yet it rarely features in mainstream crypto conversations, a disconnect the firm attributes not to weak fundamentals, but to the asset’s complexity.
"I believe it is one of the least understood, most important, and possibly most undervalued crypto assets," wrote Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, in a Tuesday blog post.
Chainlink is typically described as middleware that supplies blockchains with real-world data, such as asset prices or event outcomes. Hougan said that framing is not wrong, but it is deeply incomplete. Calling Chainlink a data oracle, he argued, is like calling Amazon a bookstore.
Chainlink launched in 2017, founded by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis, as a decentralized network for connecting smart contracts to real-world data. By allowing blockchain applications to securely access off-chain information, from asset prices to external events, it has positioned itself as a core infrastructure layer bridging blockchains with external systems.
Hougan said Chainlink provides the connective tissue that allows blockchains, which are otherwise isolated systems, to interact with markets, institutions and each other. Without that connectivity, these networks resemble powerful but offline spreadsheets: capable of complex computation, yet unable to access the information needed to function in real-world financial systems.
The investment case, according to Hougan, becomes clearer when viewed through an institutional lens. Stablecoins rely on Chainlink for price feeds, proof-of-reserves and cross-chain transfers. Tokenized stocks and bonds depend on it for pricing, compliance and settlement logic. Decentralized finance applications, prediction markets and onchain derivatives cannot function without reliable external data.
As a result, Chainlink has quietly become embedded across both crypto-native and traditional financial institutions. The report pointed to adoption by organizations such as SWIFT, DTCC, JPMorgan, Visa, Mastercard, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Euroclear, and Deutsche Börse, among others.
“For investors bullish on stablecoins, tokenization, DeFi or real-world crypto adoption,” Hougan said, “Chainlink sits at the center of all of it.”