Today, digital coins number in the thousands, but not all of them can bring investors profit. The most promising projects are those aimed at integrating cryptocurrencies into the global economy and creating conditions for the effective use of distributed registry technology.
There are many such blockchain products on the market, but only a few offer broad functionality. One of such promising technologies will be the focus of this review, in which we’ll look in detail at what Stellar Lumens cryptocurrency is and what the prospects are for its development.
An improved version of Ripple
Stellar (XLM) is not another Bitcoin competitor, but an entire ecosystem with its own token, exchange and wallet. Launched in 2014 as an offshoot of the Ripple blockchain, the network is an improved and more reliable version of its predecessor. The main goal of the project is to ensure the availability of financial transactions, reduce bank costs and increase business profitability.
Ripple developers are often accused of getting too carried away with making money on the exchange rate and abandoning the project. On popular forums, there are more and more accusations in the direction of the company’s management, which has full control over the platform due to the closed program code. There are rumors that the founders manipulated the XRP exchange rate for their own benefit, undermining investor confidence in the project.
In 2015, Joyce Kim and former Ripple employee Jed McCaleb conceived of eliminating the problems described above by creating a new technology with its own protocol and open source code. In this way, Ripple has a strong competitor with a quality product and a clean history.
Unlike Ripple, where the company’s capital is controlled by its owners, Stellar is decentralized. The developers founded a non-profit investment fund, so it’s safe to say that the funds go to the development of the project and not to the needs of certain individuals, as happens in case of Ripple.
In addition, the creators of XLM are trying to pay more attention to the product itself, as evidenced by numerous agreements with large companies. When the team announced a partnership with IBM, hardware and software manufacturing and supply leader, the Stellar cryptocurrency added about 500% in value in less than a month and then skyrocketed from $0.21 to $0.91 in just one week.
Ripple’s “killer” surpassed Ethereum’s blockchain
If you compare Ripple and Stellar in terms of fundamental and technical analysis, you can see that their charts from 2014 to the present are virtually the same, although independent of each other. The competitors develop their products in the same field, which is probably due to the similar movement of exchange rates. As statistics show, the value of cryptocurrencies is very much influenced by news about their management and promotion of the company. Here XLM has a significant advantage.
In addition, the number of uses for Stellar is much larger. And although Ripple cooperates with financial giants like Western Union and Santander, it is still unknown whether the new products that this company is testing will be approved and integrated. As for Stellar, the platform can even be used for ICO. In this way, the company poaches the audience of Ethereum, which uses the more complex Solidity programming language when writing smart contracts.
Stellar’s blockchain, in turn, is based on the popular C++, which simplifies the process. It is the broad applicability of the new technology that has enabled it to take a leading position in the crypto industry. According to Coinmarketcap rating, today Stellar cryptocurrency occupies the 28th place by market capitalization.
In addition to IBM, the developers have partnered with MoneyGram, SatoshiPay, Exch.one, Klick-Ex, Mobius, HashCash and so on. Also, with the growing interest in CBDC, financial institutions in many countries prefer to develop their own digital currencies based on Stellar.
Functional characteristics of the cryptocurrency
Apart from open source and scalability, Stellar has a wide range of features. In particular, it has a high transaction confirmation rate and allows thousands of transactions per second. In addition, the platform has a built-in decentralized exchange and a specific algorithm, so that users get the currency they are interested in.
Mining is not provided in the network and the issuance is strictly limited. After the launch of the fork, all issued coins went into circulation at once – 100 billion XLM. Subsequently, the management decided and burned half of the coins, so now the volume of all coins in the system is 50 billion.
Coin distribution:
- 5% of the volume was allocated by the Stellar Foundation for technology development.
- Lucky holders of BTC and Ripple share 20% of assets (taking into consideration the amount of these currencies on their balances). Bitcoin holders get 19% and Ripple investors only 1%.
- The other 25% of coins are distributed through non-profit organizations in order to involve as many users as possible in the system.
- Another 50% of tokens are distributed to participants who have registered on the official website of the project.
Stellar Lumens cryptocurrency: is it worth investing?
Definitely, yes. According to experts, crypto winter is not a permanent phenomenon and soon the bullish trend will appear again on the horizon, and the price of the coin, thanks to the conclusion of new partnership agreements, can increase at least twice. But do not hope for huge profits in the short term, because the cryptocurrency is more suitable for long-term investments.
Despite its broad functionality and profitable partnerships, experts’ opinions on Stellar Lumens differ. Some analysts believe that the value of tokens will reach at least $0.5 in the third quarter of 2022. Others argue that the rate will not exceed $0.3 until the end of the year, and the mark of one dollar will be crossed only in a couple or three years. But the cryptocurrency Stellar is still one of the most promising investments this year.
