Chainlink beats the market, gaining nearly 100% in just one week

Chainlink (LINK) jumped into top-20 and reached the 16th position in the global cryptocurrency rating with the current market capitalization of $1.2 billion. This Ethereum-based token powers decentralized oracle network that allows connecting Ethereum smart contracts with external data sources.  

The coin is changing hands at $3.62, down from the recent high of $4.5 hit on June 29. Despite the correction, LINK remains the best performing coin out of top-100 on a weekly basis with over 99% gains. 

What's going on

While the sudden price increase of a little known coin looks like a pump-and-dump scheme, some solid fundamental factors support Chainlink's strong momentum.

First, Coinbase Pro added the coin to the list of instruments available to its customers, which means that all users except for New York State residents can buy and sell the coin directly from their accounts. 

Apart from that, Google announced the decision to integrate the technology behind the coin into its Cloud services. This integration will allow the interaction if Ethereum smart contracts BigQuery, Google's data analyzer.

"We've demonstrated how to use Chainlink services to provide data from the BigQuery crypto public datasets on-chain. This technique can be used to reduce inefficiencies (submarine sends use case) and in some cases add entirely new capabilities (hedging use case) to Ethereum smart contracts, enabling new on-chain business models to emerge," a Cloud developer commented as cited by Ethereum News.