Chainlink highlighted by Bitwise as a top undervalued bet in crypto infrastructure

Investors may be overlooking one of crypto’s most critical infrastructure projects, according to asset manager Bitwise.

Chainlink (LINK), trading at $12.25 with a market capitalization around $10 billion, ranks among Bitwise’s highest-conviction holdings. Yet it rarely features in mainstream crypto conversations—a gap 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, Bitwise’s chief investment officer, in a Tuesday blog post.

Chainlink is often described as middleware that delivers real-world data—like asset prices or event outcomes—to blockchains. While accurate, Hougan says this definition is incomplete. Calling Chainlink a “data oracle,” he argues, is like calling Amazon merely a bookstore.

Launched in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis, Chainlink is a decentralized network connecting smart contracts to off-chain data. By allowing blockchains to securely access external information, it has become a foundational infrastructure layer bridging blockchain networks with real-world systems.

Hougan notes that Chainlink provides the connectivity that allows otherwise isolated blockchains to interact with markets, institutions, and each other. Without it, networks are like powerful offline spreadsheets—capable of computation, but lacking the data needed to operate in real-world financial systems.

The investment case is especially compelling from an institutional perspective. Stablecoins rely on Chainlink for price feeds, proof-of-reserves, and cross-chain transfers. Tokenized stocks and bonds use it for pricing, compliance, and settlement. DeFi applications, prediction markets, and on-chain derivatives all depend on its reliable data.

Chainlink has quietly gained adoption across both crypto-native and traditional financial institutions, including SWIFT, DTCC, JPMorgan, Visa, Mastercard, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Euroclear, and Deutsche Börse.

“For investors bullish on stablecoins, tokenization, DeFi, or real-world crypto adoption,” Hougan concluded, “Chainlink sits at the center of all of it.”