LINK Breaking Out, PayPal Launching Stablecoin

Market Update Major equity indices are sliding today, impacted by disappointing trade data from China overnight. This decline was further compounded by credit downgrades issued by Moody's for multiple regional banks, such as M&T Bank and Pinnacle Financial. These downgrades were attributed to deposit risks, looming recession concerns, and commercial real estate portfolios faltering. As a ripple effect, the DXY has surged by 50 bps in response to these negative headlines. Long-term rates have retracted, showing a stark deviation from their trends last week. On the brighter side, the crypto market is demonstrating upward momentum. This aligns with the observation made in March that banking stress generally leads to improved liquidity conditions, which benefits crypto. $BTC is up 1.5%, hovering around $29.6k, while $ETH has experienced a more modest rise of 1%, to around $1850. Among large-cap assets, $SOL and $LINK are leading the charge. The latter's performance is likely getting a boost from Chainlink's debut on Coinbase's Ethereum L2 Base (more technical thoughts from Mark below).Yesterday PayPal became the first non-crypto institution to launch its own USD-backed stablecoin named PayPal USD (PYUSD). This venture into the stablecoin arena is facilitated by a partnership with Pa