What's Behind the Meteoric Rise of Chainlink?

Chainlink has experienced a meteoric rise this year, becoming a top five crypto asset by market capitalization.

The battle for the number five spot in 2020 has been waged between Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Litecoin, Cardano and LINK. The latter entered the year well behind the other competitors.

Chainlink has been making partnership and integration announcements nonstop throughout the year.

There was a dubious report penned by Zeus Capital that called Chainlink a scam and crypto's version of Wirecard.

Despite competition and critics, the token price continues to rise.

Since Chainlink is the best-known player in this space, it stands to win the most from the growth of the DeFi space.

Popular interest in Chainlink is at all-time high in the U.S. and globally, according to data from Google Trends.

Thus two disparate data sources seem, to at least, partially explain LINK's rise.

When Framework Ventures co-founder and an early Chainlink investor, Michael Anderson told Cointelegraph in April that he expected LINK to rise above $25 in the near future, his prediction seemed detached from reality.

The price of LINK at the time was hovering below $4. Today, it is closer to the forecasted value of $25 than to the price at the time when the forecast was made.