Bitcoin returned below $80,000 at the start of the new week, with its short-term upward trend temporarily slowing down. In contrast, the Chainlink token LINK performed significantly stronger, rising against the trend when mainstream crypto assets were generally trading sideways or declining, becoming one of the top ten tokens with the most outstanding performance of the day.

LINK rises to a level not seen in nearly eight months

As of September 7, LINK once rose to $13.64, reaching its highest level since January 18, with a 24-hour increase of about 6.8%. The derivatives market also heated up accordingly, with the open interest in LINK contracts rising to $784 million, a new high for 11 months.

The direct catalyst for market attention comes from a collaboration disclosed by Chainlink last week. Payment and fund management service provider Bottomline stated that it will use the infrastructure of Chainlink to connect its existing systems to public and private blockchain settlement networks. The company is one of the important providers in the service sector of SWIFT, serving over 600 banks and processing payments worth more than 16 trillion US dollars annually.

Bottomline connects to the Chainlink system

According to the disclosed information, Chainlink's cross-chain interoperability protocol CCIP will be responsible for transferring the value of tokenized assets between different blockchains, while Chainlink Runtime Environment ( CRE ) is used to coordinate the payment process, including path distribution and confirmation steps.

For banks, the key point of this arrangement is that there is no need to rebuild the existing messaging system. Banks can continue to use the ISO 20022 standard messages to send cross-border payment instructions, while Chainlink mainly serves as an underlying connection layer to access blockchain settlement. Reports indicate that neither party has announced a formal launch date, nor have they disclosed the list of pilot banks.

Bitcoin temporarily held above $80,000

Bitcoin continues to show a trend of consolidation at high levels. After a significant rise in August, BTC has failed to break through the $82,000 mark twice in the past two weeks, and it remained below $80,000 at the start of this week. Reports mention that the market is focusing on two macroeconomic factors this month, including the latest inflation data and the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision on September 16th.

In addition to the latest collaboration, Chainlink's interactions with traditional financial institutions are not new. In 2023, SWIFT joined hands with Chainlink to conduct interoperability tests with more than a dozen institutions, including Citibank and Bank of New York Mellon, to integrate tokenized assets into the Ethereum Sepolia test network. It was also reported that when Credit Suisse announced an expansion of its retail crypto trading services at the end of August, it included Chainlink in the list of newly supported assets.

Under the combined influence of multiple positive factors, LINK has seen a cumulative increase of 57% in the past 30 days, standing out particularly against the backdrop of a recent slowdown in the trend of mainstream cryptocurrencies.