The cryptocurrency Chainlink (LINK) has seen a significant increase in price following news of a possible strategic partnership with SWIFT at the Consensys 2024 conference in Austin, Texas. Investors and analysts are closely watching the progress of this partnership, as updates on the partnership could have a significant impact on LINK's market performance. The hype around the upcoming update is likely to have helped LINK's price rise by nearly 12%, reaching a high of around $18.8 on May 27.

The excitement for the partnership is a keynote speech titled “How SWIFT and Chainlink are working together to unlock tokenized assets at scale.” The speech will take place on May 30 and will feature speakers including SWIFT’s Jonathan Ehrenfeld and Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov. The two speakers will discuss how Chainlink and SWIFT’s collaboration can combine traditional financial infrastructure with the evolving multi-chain economy.

Furthermore, this collaboration could help create a global on-chain financial system for tokenized assets, thereby simplifying and enhancing the security of cross-chain transactions. A previous experiment in June 2023 has already demonstrated SWIFT’s ability to serve as a unified access point for various blockchain networks. Anticipation of further developments in this collaboration is driving market optimism, which in turn has fueled Chainlink’s recent price surge.

Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe shared his views on LINK’s price action, noting that the coin has formed higher lows and higher highs, a pattern indicative of a bullish trend. A potential launch of the new protocol at the Consensys conference or the launch of the mainnet could provide the momentum needed to validate this bullish trend.

Van de Poppe’s analysis highlights Chainlink’s progress in its partnership with SWIFT as having huge upside potential. Integrating Chainlink’s on-chain data and cross-chain interoperability solutions with SWIFT’s financial communications network will help foster further collaboration between blockchain projects and traditional financial firms. The move will also have implications for global digital assets. This strategic collaboration coupled with the bullish trend shown by technical indicators puts Chainlink in a good position to achieve significant growth.

The LINK price is showing a bullish technical pattern called a bull flag pattern, which is another reason for the LINK price to rise. While the pattern alone is enough to attract traders, the upcoming bullish signals from the Consensys 2024 conference are another reason as they help the LINK price breakout and confirm the pattern.

A bull flag pattern is when a cryptocurrency price experiences a near vertical rise, forming a flagpole. This pattern is often seen in assets that are in a strong uptrend. After the steep rise, the asset undergoes a sustained period of consolidation, forming the portion of the flagpole. Despite the initial strong rise, the price remains stable due to persistent buying. Typically, a breakout from this consolidation phase triggers another significant uptrend.

The pattern is completed when price breaks out from the flag area and effectively resumes its previous upward trajectory. Traders predict the price target of the breakout by adding the length of the flag pole to the breakout price level.

According to the rules of technical analysis, if the coin confirms this bullish technical pattern, the LINK price could rise above 269% to reach $69, which is near the theoretical price target of the pattern.