Introduction to Grayscale’s Chainlink ETF
Grayscale’s conversion of its old Chainlink trust into the GLNK exchange-traded product on December 2 did more than just add another ticker to the NYSE Arca board. With trading volume of around $13 million on the first day, immediate inflows of $41 million, and assets increasing to around $64 million within the first 48 hours, GLNK entered the market different from the speculative altcoin quotes that characterized much of the previous cycle.
Grayscale Chainlink ETF daily inflows since its launch on December 2nd (Source: SoSo Value)
The Tokenization Thesis
Instead, it came to market as the first US financial product to provide direct access to the Oracle infrastructure layer. This layer acts as the digital plumbing system required to make blockchain networks useful for the real world of finance. However, behind the strong headline lies a complex bet. By packaging a utility token in a regulated equity shell, Grayscale has presented institutional investors with a difficult question: Does the inevitable growth of tokenized finance actually require an increase in the price of the LINK token?
GLNK is structured as a physically backed commodity product in accordance with NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E and holds LINK as its sole asset. It launched with a temporary fee of 0%, a standard seeding mechanism for this year’s ETF launches, before a planned shift to 0.35% once the vehicle reaches $1 billion in assets in early March.
Market Reaction and Forecasts
GLNK’s launch came at a time when tokenization had moved from a back-end experiment to a boardroom priority. A recent op-ed by BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein in The Economist called tokenized settlement the inevitable next evolution of market infrastructure. This is in line with forecasts from BCG and ADDX, which estimate the total value of tokenized private wealth at nearly $16 trillion by 2030, as well as Citi’s revised base case, which predicts stablecoin circulation of up to $1.9 trillion by the end of the decade.
Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, said: “I believe Chainlink will make the vision of tokenization a reality.” The Chainlink network, which claims to secure over $100 billion in total value and holds a dominant 70% market share in decentralized finance (DeFi), is the theoretical beneficiary of this migration.
ChainLink’s overall transaction enables (Source: ChainLink)
Regulatory Architecture and Competitive Landscape
Using NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E, typically reserved for physically backed commodity ETPs, provides a level of consistency that market makers prefer. It simplifies the creation and redemption process, allowing authorized participants to efficiently hedge their books and keep spreads tight. This structure also illustrates the competitive landscape. While other oracle networks like the Solana-based Pyth offer similar technological utility, they lack the regulated bridge that Chainlink has now built.
By removing regulatory hurdles, Grayscale has initially created a moat. For an institutional allocator, the difference between “technologically superior” and “regulatory accessible” is often the difference between passing and investing.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
Despite these structural headwinds, the market’s early reaction suggests a need for thematic diversification. Industry officials have described initial trading volumes as robust for a single-asset debut, noting in particular that GLNK outperformed several other altcoin listings in 2025 on a market cap-adjusted basis. CryptoSlate’s analysis, based on comparable thematic ETF launches, suggests a base case scenario in which GLNK accumulates between $150 million and $300 million in assets under management (AUM) by mid-2026.
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