‘Link Marines’ Are Making an Obscure Cryptocurrency Red Hot

While Bitcoin enjoys a resurgence, this year’s breakout cryptocurrency is actually something called Chainlink that has grown to become the world’s fifth-biggest coin by market value.

Chainlink token’s price has increased more than ninefold since the start of the year year to about $6.6 billion. It’s now bigger than Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin or Binance Coin.

The euphoria around Chainlink is due, in large part, to this summer’s fevered activity surrounding decentralized finance, or so-called DeFi applications, the most popular of which let users lend or borrow cryptocurrencies and to speculate via a technique called yield harvesting that often promises…