Data indicates that once the company’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) was made available earlier this week, wealthy investors began exchanging Ether for Chainlink’s crypto (LINK), which led to a rise in its token prices on Thursday, July 20.
On Thursday, LINK traded hands for $8 as trading volume more than doubled to $580 million, boosting weekly gains to nearly 25%.
According to on-chain data , some Whales added more than $6 million to their link holdings, driving up prices by as much as 6%.
CCIP is made to support the development of cross-chain services and applications. On the Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism, and Polygon blockchains, it was made live for early access users while being tested by at least 25 partners who are currently starting to transition to the mainnet.
All developers can access CCIP starting Thursday across five testnets, including Polygon Mumbai, Ethereum Sepolia, Optimism Goerli, and Avalanche Fuji.
According to CoinGecko data, various other Oracle protocols’ prices also increased. Band Protocol’s BAND increased 9% over the previous day, while API3 and UMA for Uma both increased 5.4%.
At least 25 partners tested CCIP before starting to migrate to the mainnet; early adopters include the decentralized liquidity platform Synthetix and the Aave decentralized finance protocol. Leading decentralized finance protocols will be able to adopt CCIP, according to a blog post published on Monday by the Chainlink (LINK) team.
The collaboration between the protocol and SWIFT, a closed network used by banks to conduct international money transfers, has been largely made possible by the interoperability protocol.
Chainlink and Swift declared in June that they would test connecting many financial institutions to blockchain networks. Swift will link to several blockchains using CCIP. According to Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, the following stage of the partnership will be a pilot phase.
The initiative “could connect all of the blockchains and all of the bank chains,” according to Nazarov.
The early access stage will serve as a springboard for the protocol’s transfer to mainnet general availability when it becomes operational and accessible to everyone.
Consequently, Chainlink (LINK) is currently seeing a significant rise due to the original buzz surrounding CCIP. As of the time of publication, LINK has increased 21% today, surpassing $8 for the first time since April 15th. A few more positive indicators are visible on LINK’s daily chart.
As of the time of publication, LINK has broken above an ascending channel, negating any bearish interpretation of the pattern. After breaking through the channel, the asset established a position above significant Exponential Moving Average (EMA) levels. The 200-EMA (orange line), 100-EMA (red line), and 50-EMA (green line) are all currently above the price.
In the coming days, if the 50-EMA can hold its position above the 100-EMA and 200-EMA while LINK maintains a higher price range, there is a significantly greater chance that LINK will reach $8.40 and $8.80. LINK might hit $10 or even higher as a new yearly high if the bullish trend continues.
Currently, resistance at the aforementioned $8.40–$8.80 level is significant, and investors should be paying attention to the way the market is currently structured.