LINK/USD is up 10% leaving price just shy of all-time high

LINK trades at $4.93 as of Wednesday, up 10% in the past 24 hours and 22.8% over the past week. The 13th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap opened at $4.43 the prior day and climbed to $4.94 before settling at $4.79 in afternoon trading.

On March 4, Chainlink hit $4.95. The March 12 market crash sent it down to $1.85. By June 12, the token had recovered to $4.22, then slipped back to $3.90 the same day. Last week's starting point sat around $4.10, and bulls have pushed prices higher.

The daily chart shows LINK trading within an ascending channel. The relative strength index reached 73.2, signaling overbought conditions. The index has room to climb higher, giving buyers a chance to extend gains before a pullback hits. A break through the upper channel boundary on higher volume would likely spark a move toward resistance above. If rejected, traders expect prices to fall back to support at $4.74, $4.38, and the 20-day simple moving average.

Traders attribute the week's surge to momentum across decentralized finance and a new partnership. Chainlink's integrations with DeFi protocols have benefited from renewed interest in the sector. Kyber Network, a liquidity protocol that uses Chainlink's oracle, has seen its token gain alongside. Compound released its COMP governance token at $60 last week, and traders pushed the price to $362 within days. Chainlink announced a partnership with China's Blockchain Services Network, which will use Chainlink to process off-chain data.