XLM - what is it?

Is it XRP’s little sister? Or something else?

I’ve noticed Stellar Lumens is hardly posted about on this sub. I’ve been a long time hodler of XLM and I think it’s time for some informative Stellar diving on this sub. Therefore I have tried to take a dive into it:

History:

XLM is a cryptocurrency created in 2014. It was launched by the non-profit Stellar Development Foundation - SDF (Stellar.org). One of SDF’s main goals is making money more fluid, markets more open, and people more empowered (source: stellar.org) -by doing that they also want to provide financial services to the unbanked.

XLM is kinda like XRP’s little sister. The founders used to be one team at Ripple (they have lots of resemblance on how they operate and do business). Jed McCaleb parted Ripple and started Stellar network in 2014 and launched ‘Stellars’ as a token. They later changed the name into ‘Lumens’.

The Stellar platform is open to all cryptocurrencies, XLM is its own digital currency, the foundation of the network.

Supply:

There are about 50 billion lumens total in existence (no more lumens will be created) - 50,001,806,811.60 to be accurate. Circulating supply is approx. 52% or roughly 26 billion coins. The other 48% are ‘owned’ by SDF. SDF will release the other 24 billion coins over the next years on the market

Potential/Risk:

• The potential of faster and cheaper money movement and providing financial services to billions of people who do not have access to financial services, is huge. Especially for the 3 billion (!!) unbanked people on earth.

• XLM are usually used to pay transaction fees on Stellar. However, they also act as the intermediate currency that allows Stellar users to execute trades quickly. For example, if you send a payment in U.S. dollars to a recipient in Mexico, Stellar converts the payment to lumens, and the recipient can receive the payment in pesos. It takes only seconds to complete the entire conversion, making it easy to send and receive money from anywhere in the world. Due to this it’s actually one of the most used cryptocurrencies.

• Both XLM and XRP have their own market and in the end they can co-exist as they have different purposes. The main thing at this moment is the Ripple lawsuit. Even though it has nothing to do with Stellar, the regulatory framework for Stellar will be similar (only difference is Stellar is a non-profit) and the price of XLM is highly correlated to XRP. If Ripple’s lawsuit gets finalized, XLM’s future is more clear as well (at least in the USA).

• Potential risk on the XLM price is the huge amount of XLM still owned by its creators (SDF) and the centralized character of the network (there’s a non-profit centralized organization running it). The market has to absorb all these extra coins. This will impact the price (or at least the price growth). - don’t expect prices of tens of dollars in the near future. Don’t expect $10 XLM prices, that would mean a market cap of $260 billion at current circulating supply.

Conclusion:

• When buying/owning XLM, besides earning you some money, you invest in making this world a better and more fair place for people in developing countries. Isn’t that what it is all about????

• XLM is currently one of the most used crypto’s. But mostly to convert from currency to currency (both fiat and crypto)

• Centralized character of the network/organization and the huge amount of XLM tokens is a (price) risk

• To reach the unbanked takes time. Especially earning trust from them takes time as they have been robbed, manipulated and outcasted by the traditional financial system since ever.

• Regulations are still unclear, especially with the Ripple lawsuit still going on.

To sum up: I believe in the vision of Stellar and I like the idea of giving everyone in the world the opportunity to reach some form of financial services. It will take time, the world isn’t changed in one day!

Sources: gobankingrates.com Stellar.org CoinMarketCap