Bitcoin fell below $80,000 again today, dropping by about 1%, as August's stellar rebound left investors with gains of more than 20% over the past 30 days.
But as trading enthusiasm for major cryptocurrencies has cooled, at least one altcoin is climbing up the charts: Chainlink, the native token of the decentralized oracle network, surged by a remarkable 6.8% in the past 24 hours. Can it keep crypto’s hot summer going a little longer?
In the past two weeks, Bitcoin was rejected twice at $82,000 and opened today below $80,000, still trading under the 50-week moving average near $81,000—a level it lost in May.
After a major surge at the end of August, the coin remains stuck in a compressed range. Analysts are discussing the possibility of a trend reversal driving the price upward, as well as the so-called Bart Simpson pattern, which could drag the price down toward $65,000 within days.
Bitcoin price data. Image: Tradingview
On the fundamentals side, traders are watching two catalysts this month: the latest inflation data and the US Federal Reserve's September 16 rate decision, as Friday's stronger-than-expected August jobs report raised the likelihood of a rate hike.
Meanwhile, Chainlink experienced a completely different week.
Chainlink, trading as LINK, jumped to $13.64 on Monday—its highest level since January 18. This gain of roughly 6.8% in 24 hours made it the best-performing crypto among the top 10 by market capitalization, as most others traded flat or declined. In the derivatives market, open interest in LINK contracts also reached an 11-month high of $784 million.
Chainlink price data. Image: Tradingview
The rally may be traced back to a deal Chainlink announced last week with Bottomline, one of the top three SWIFT service providers, which manages payment automation and financial operations for more than 600 banks.
Its cross-chain interoperability protocol, or CCIP, has been live since July 2023 and now connects with over 60 blockchains, enabling the transfer of tokenized value across them. The Chainlink Runtime Environment, or CRE, coordinates what the company describes as “end-to-end payment workflows,” routing and confirming transactions in the process.
This isn’t Chainlink’s first encounter with SWIFT
SWIFT itself previously tested Chainlink. In 2023, SWIFT, together with Chainlink and over 10 institutions—including Citibank and Wells Fargo—ran interoperability experiments, moving tokenized assets on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet.
Standard Chartered, in last month’s announcement of its $200 price target, noted that institutions—including SWIFT—were already using Chainlink services, citing $11 billion in value protected by Chainlink.
Moreover, at the end of August, financial services giant Charles Schwab announced plans to expand its retail crypto offering beyond just Bitcoin and Ethereum. The brokerage selected only three more assets to list on its trading platform: Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink.
A slew of bullish news may be a major reason Chainlink is currently outperforming almost every other coin in the top 20 by market capitalization—except for Zcash: LINK is up 57% over the past 30 days.
