LINK 4H ATR-Expansion Breakout Long (Volatility-Regime-Change Entry)

A long-only, single-instrument, single-timeframe strategy on LINKUSDT.BINANCE 4H bars implementing a NEW MECHANISM CLASS: VOLATILITY EXPANSION as the primary entry signal, not channel breach. The mechanism: detect bars where the current ATR has expanded meaningfully above its 30-bar smoothed average (atr_14 / atr_sma_30 >= 1.4) AND the bar closes bullishly AND price has progressed to a new 5-bar high — interpreting this as a 'volatility regime change' with directional bias. Gated by long-term uptrend filter (close > sma_100) to prevent fading downtrends. CRITICALLY DISTINCT from every existing pipeline mechanism: (a) NOT a Donchian breakout — uses ATR-expansion ratio as the primary trigger, not a channel-breach price level; (b) NOT a volume-spike — uses bar-range volatility (ATR), not transaction volume; (c) NOT a candlestick pattern or close-position pattern — uses multi-bar ATR aggregation, not single-bar or short-window bar geometry; (d) NOT a vol-targeting sizing strategy — vol expansion is the SIGNAL, not the sizing input. The mechanism class is 'volatility regime change' which is documented in Engle 1982 ARCH models and Mandelbrot 1963 vol-clustering literature, applied to crypto by Bekiros 2017 'Volatility persistence in cryptocurrency markets.' LINK is a new 4H instrument in the pipeline — only LinkDailyMultiWeekTrendContinuationLong exists (Daily timeframe), no LINK 4H strategy. LINK has distinct narrative cycles (oracle integrations, CCIP launches, Chainlink BUILD partnership news, RWA tokenization) that produce volatility-expansion events decoupled from BTC/ETH/SOL beta. Single-instrument, single-timeframe — directly avoids the multi-instrument audit_stale failure mode. Long-only because (i) vol expansion + bullish bar + uptrend confluence is bullish-biased, (ii) the trend gate prevents fading downtrends, (iii) shorts on crypto majors empirically refuted.