

Believers in Stellar Lumens think the altcoin has the potential to disrupt cross-border financial payments. On the other hand, McKinsey highlights, “estimated revenue per cross-border transaction remains healthy at more than $20.” Regardless of the size of a given remittance, each transaction costs just 0.00001 XLM. According to the World Bank, around 1.7 billion individuals do not have access to a bank account. Some of these include money remittances and bank loans to those without access to banks. Various partnerships with banks across the world allow individuals to make good use of the platform’s services. In other words, XLM is more popular for peer-to-peer transactions. Ripple works with established banking institutions, whereas Stellar focuses on individuals and developing markets. What makes Stellar different from a group such as Ripple is the customer target. The trend is likely to continue in the coming months. The increased level of adoption of the Stellar Lumens blockchain has been providing tailwinds for the price of XLM. Low-cost and fast transfers are getting noticed by corporations. International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) and Franklin Templeton, whose parent company is Franklin Resources (NYSE: BEN), are among the businesses that use the Stellar network for cross-border transactions. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple have market caps of $901 billion, $180 billion, and $21 billion, respectively. Valued at over $9 billion, XLM is now one of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Stellar Lumens is one of the crypto coins that stayed around, along with the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum (CCC: ETH-USD), after the 2017 crypto decline. On the other hand, if crypto can hold its strength and continue to make a mark in the financial world, the growth of XLM could continue in the future. If there were a similar pullback to that of 2017/18, Bitcoin (CCC: BTC-USD) and many altcoins would likely see a sharp decline in price. The price of XLM and any crypto will depend heavily on how cryptocurrencies do as a whole. The group describes itself as “an open network for storing and moving money.” Professor David Mazières of Stanford University, California, has been part of the creative process behind Stellar Lumens. At present, Ripple is fighting these allegations. On a side note, many readers may recall that in December 2020, the SEC charged two Ripple executives, Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse, alleging that between 20 they fraudulently sold $1.3 billion of XRP in unregistered sales. Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Ripple (CCC: XRP-USD) started Stellar as an altcoin alternative to XRP. For instance, PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) points out global e-commerce means over $300 billion a year is spent across borders. Global transactions have been on the rise. It is mainly used by individuals and institutions for cross-border transactions. The Stellar network, launched in 2015, is a blockchain-based payment protocol.
