Chainlink (LINK), an established decentralized oracle network, has announced a strategic partnership with Mastercard Inc. (NYSE: MA), a global payment technology company, to enable mainstream adoption of digital assets. The collaboration will combine Chainlink’s interoperability infrastructure with Mastercard’s payment network to facilitate the direct purchase of crypto assets by 3 billion cardholders.
The strategic partnership between Chainlink and Mastercard will incorporate Zerohash for compliance and liquidity. The collaboration will also leverage Shift4 Payments for card processing, and Uniswap (UNI) for decentralized token swaps.
”This is the type of traditional finance and decentralized finance convergence that Chainlink was built to make possible. I’m excited about Chainlink’s ability to enable this critical connection between the traditional payments world and the over three billion cardholders in the Mastercard user base, directly into the next generation trading environments of on-chain decentralized exchanges,” Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink, noted.
Market Impact on LINK Price
The strategic collaboration between Chainlink and Mastercard will have a long-term effect on the LINK price action. Following the announcement, LINK price recorded the highest gains in the top 20 crypto assets by market capitalization.
The mid-cap altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of about $13.4 billion and a 24-hour average trading volume of around $686 million, pumped over 10 percent on Tuesday to trade at about $13.39 during the mid-North American trading session fueled by rising on-chain activity.
From a technical analysis standpoint, LINK price faces intense midterm bearish sentiment. With BTC price signaling a potential selloff below $100k soon, LINK price could drop below $10 to retest the support level around $9.2. However, a consistent close above the resistance/support level around $17 will rejuvenate midterm bullish sentiment.
