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Stellar Lumens dramatically reduces the cost of international transfers.
Key points
- Stellar is a money-transfer platform that aims to help the world’s financial systems work together on a single network.
- Lumens (XLM) is Stellar’s native cryptocurrency.
- Money transfers can cost as much as 6.5%, but transactions on Stellar cost a fraction of this.
Stellar is a well-established cryptocurrency project that arguably got a little bit lost in the crypto frenzy of 2021. Price-wise, its Lumens token (XLM) gained about 100% last year, compared to other cryptos that gained 5,000% or more. However, it has been around since 2014, and spent much of that time in the top 50 cryptos by market capitalization, making it an interesting long-term prospect.
It’s not a sexy programmable crypto like Ethereum (ETH) or Solana (SOL), though it is working on developing smart contract functionality. However, Stellar is all about money transfers, and money transfers are big business. Stellar lets people send money anywhere, whether it’s dollars, Bitcoin (BTC), or euros. It aims to let all the world’s financial systems work together on a single network.
XLM basics
Stellar is a remittance and money transfer platform, designed to make it easy to send money anywhere in the world quickly and cheaply. It’s similar to another well-known crypto, Ripple (XRP), which is hardly surprising given that crypto-pioneer Jed McCaleb was involved in founding both projects. But where Ripple focuses on financial institutions, Stellar focuses on individuals.
- What it does: XLM, or Lumens, is the native token on the Stellar platform. Users need to hold XLM to make transactions on the platform.
- Management team: Cofounded by Jed McCaleb, David Mazières, and Joyce Kim.
- Date launched: 2014
- Market cap: $4.5 billion (CoinMarketCap, March 16)
- Availability: Many major U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges
Should you buy?
Stellar is a solid cryptocurrency project. It has a strong team behind it and solves an important real-world problem — the high costs of making international payments. It boasts a number of big partnerships, including MoneyGram, Circle (the company behind USDC), and IBM.
One question to ask of any cryptocurrency is what problem it solves, and whether there’s a market for that solution. Stellar’s ability to provide rapid and low-cost money transfers …….
Source: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/should-you-or-anyone-buy-stellar-xlm/
