Benjamin Cowen, a popular cryptocurrency analyst, has revealed that while he believes that the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin ($BTC) is set to appreciate in the near future, he believes that Chainlink ($LINK) could do even better.

In an interview with Altcoin Daily, Cowen laid out his bullish case for the decentralized oracle platform, noting that while he often refers to BTC’s dominance – or its share of the cryptocurrency market – going much higher in the future, some tokens may still outperform it.

Cowen said that “f history is any indication, at the end of a bear market and in the accumulation phase before the next bull market, Chainlink is a reasonable place to look.”

Cowen added that the decentralized oracle platform has been integrated into several projects to enable smart contracts to receive data. The project’s strength, he said, isn’t being translated into a higher price over the ongoing bear market, which has seen investors move away from risk assets over interest rate rises meant to tame inflation.

Per the analyst, the “fundamentals of Chainlink shine through a bit better in the bear market than they sometimes do in the bull market.” He said:

Chainlink sort of acts as a backbone for a lot of cryptocurrencies.… We’ve seen over the years, just how many cryptocurrency projects it’s integrated itself into and I would argue that it provides a very valuable service in providing real-time feeds via the blockchain.

Cowen added he is looking to see how $LINK performs in the future if cryptocurrency prices keep on dropping in the near future.

Notably, Chainlink has recently partnered with SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication to try to bridge the gap between traditional banks and blockchain. The partnership will see both working on an “initial proof of concept” using Chainlink’s cross-chain interoperability protocol, which provides a cross-blockchain communication standard.

The partnership will mean that the 11,000 financial institutions connected to SWIFT will be able to engage in token transactions across chains. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov has said the move will accelerate the adoption of distributed ledger technology across capital markets and traditional finance.

SWIFT’s interbank messaging system is the most widely used platform for traditional cross-border fiat transactions. In August, it recorded an average of 44.8 million messages per day. Transactions made using SWIFT’s network can take days to complete, however.

Chainlink has said the collaboration with SWIFT allows financial institutions to gain blockchain capability without replacing, developing, and integrating new connectivity into legacy systems.

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