Chainlink Booms With Swift Payments Update, Ethereum ETF Rush

With US financial markets closed for Memorial Day, the long holiday weekend marked a relatively quiet start to the week for most crypto markets – but one digital asset is booming: Chainlink (LINK).

The 14th largest cryptocurrency by market value, LINK was Monday's best performer among the top 40 coins. Data from CoinGecko shows that it has increased by more than 10% in the past day, and is now trading at $18.75.

LINK is the native token of Chainlink, an Ethereum-based word project designed to securely access and retrieve data on the blockchain – and between chains.

This may be due to the excitement of LINK holders and supporters as it was revealed that Chainlink will be offering together with global payment platform SWIFT at this week's deal conference in Austin, Texas.

This collaboration, which bore its first fruits last fall, proves that “existing infrastructure can be integrated into the new world of blockchain,” according to Chainlink.

Chainlink project co-founder Sergey Nazarov expressed optimism for Ethereum and all digital assets over the weekend following the historic adoption of Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs), saying, “It's really just the beginning.”

“Like most systems and protocols that initially list Bitcoin and ETH and then list many other tokens later, this is really the direction we're headed,” he said. “It's a sign that not only Bitcoin, not just ETH, but many other tokens around the world will eventually get their own ETFs, allowing the larger global capital markets to connect to that financial product,” he said.

Chainlink has been on a roll lately, yesterday announcing the network's progress on nine different blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon and Base.

Earlier this month, DTCC—the largest settlement and clearing house in the United States—announced the use of ChainLink's cross-chain interoperability protocol with Wall Street giants JP Morgan and BNY Mellon as part of a token pilot. That pilot, dubbed Smart NAV, allowed Wall Street institutions to access mutual fund data on public networks.

Finally, crypto investment firm 21Shares today featured Chainlink in its latest weekly research newsletter, saying it is “revolutionizing the realm of tokenization” and enabling “over $10 trillion in over 2000 projects across 22 different networks.”

Despite the renewed interest in the Chainlink protocol, however, LINK still has a long way to go – up more than 64% – before reaching its historic 2021 all-time high of $52.70.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.