Chainlink breaks from Bitcoin's compression zone, LINK hits eight-month high on institutional deal flow
Crypto's late-summer momentum has stalled at the macro threshold. Bitcoin ($BTC) opened the week below $80,000, down roughly 1% in 24 hours, having been rejected twice from the $82,000 level over the past two weeks and sitting…
Key takeaways
- Chainlink (LINK) rose 6.8% to $13.64, its highest level since January 18, and was the top performer among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
- LINK's gain was driven by a deal with Bottomline, a top-three SWIFT services provider serving roughly 1,200 financial institutions, which will connect its systems to blockchains via Chainlink's CCIP and CRE products.
- Bitcoin moved the opposite way, opening the week below $80,000, down about 1% in 24 hours, after being rejected twice from the $82,000 level and sitting under its 50-week moving average near $81,000.
- Open interest on LINK contracts reached an 11-month high of $784 million on Monday, with LINK up 57% over 30 days versus Bitcoin's 20%-plus.
- Standard Chartered set a $200 price target for LINK by 2030, citing Chainlink's $110 billion in secured value.
Crypto's late-summer momentum has stalled at the macro threshold. Bitcoin ($BTC) opened the week below $80,000, down roughly 1% in 24 hours, having been rejected twice from the $82,000 level over the past two weeks and sitting beneath the 50-week moving average near $81,000 that it lost in May. Chainlink ($LINK) moved the other way, rising 6.8% to $13.64, its highest print since January 18 and the top performer among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
The Bottomline deal and what it carries
The immediate catalyst is a deal Chainlink announced last week with Bottomline, a top-three SWIFT services provider handling payments automation and treasury management for more than 600 banks. Bottomline serves roughly 1,200 financial institutions and 10,000 businesses worldwide. Under the arrangement, Bottomline will connect its existing systems to public and private blockchains via two live Chainlink products: the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), active since July 2023 and spanning more than 60 blockchains, and the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), which coordinates payment workflows end-to-end. Banks keep sending the ISO 20022 messages they already use, the cross-border payment standard that reached 97% adoption following a November 2025 switchover. Chainlink sits underneath as the connector, not a replacement. Neither company has disclosed a go-live date or named a pilot bank.
The institutional trail runs further back. SWIFT itself tested Chainlink in 2023 alongside more than 10 institutions, including Citi and BNY Mellon, moving tokenized assets onto Ethereum's Sepolia testnet. Standard Chartered named SWIFT among institutions already using Chainlink services last month, and the bank set a $200 price target for LINK by 2030, citing Chainlink's $110 billion in secured value. Charles Schwab, separately, announced plans to expand retail crypto trading beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, selecting three additional assets for its platform: Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink.
Rates and the Bitcoin overhang
Derivatives markets are pricing in the move. Open interest on LINK contracts hit an 11-month high of $784 million Monday, as LINK's 57% gain over the last 30 days pulled well ahead of Bitcoin's 20%-plus August rally that now looks like it may be fading.
On the Bitcoin side, technicians are split between a trend-reversal read that would keep prices climbing and a so-called Bart Simpson pattern that could pull the price back toward $65,000. The deciding input may be external to both camps: traders are watching fresh inflation data and the Federal Reserve's September 16 rate decision, after Friday's stronger-than-expected August jobs report raised the odds of a hike.
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