Tag: XLM

XLM Takes Off With 20% Gain, SDF CEO Outlines Drivers Which Could Fuel Rally

by NEWSBTC

XLM has been following the general sentiment in the crypto market and records bullish momentum in lower timeframes. The cryptocurrency records high volatility in the past day, as the U.S. published its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) which continues to trend higher.

Related Reading | Stellar To Deploy Smart Contracts By End Of 2022? XLM Reacts To The Upside

As of press time, XLM is trading at $0.23 with a 1.7% loss in the last 24 hours, a 3.2% and 22.6% profit in the last hour and 30 days, respectively.

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XLM moves to the upside on the daily chart. Source: XLMUSDT Tradingview

Although XLM has been following the general market trend, it has been lagging when compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other largest cryptocurrencies. Data from Material Indicators suggest the recent upside move to the upside was sold off by small investors.

As the market approached the CPI print, investors with ask orders of up to $10,000 drove the price down, but bulls were quick at reverting the downside trend. This positive reaction suggests investors have already price-in inflation impact on the market, at least, for the short term.

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Thus, XLM’s price and the crypto market could see an extended bullish trend. Additional data provided by Material Indicators shows that Stellar bounced back on critical support, as there was a cluster of bidding orders around today’s lows near $0.22.

To the upside, $0.240 could operate as the next major resistance area, but bulls could breach through these levels if they managed to sustain momentum. The CPI print was higher than expected with a 7.5% and will continue to be a macro-economic risk for XLM bulls and crypto bulls.

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Source: Two Prime Digital Assets via Twitter

However, the short term seems poised for more gains. At least until mid-March when the U.S. Federal Reserve should announce a decision on their monetary policy.

The Bullish Case For XLM And The Stellar Ecosystem

XLM’s price recent price action could be supported by several bullish developments on the Stellar ecosystem. Denelle Dixon CEO at the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) summarized some of the use cases hosted on this ecosystem and impacting the real world.

First, Dixon mentioned the partnership with MoneyGram which has allowed the payment company to provide its users with a “way to seamlessly convert USDC to cash, or cash to USDC”. Thus, creating a gateway from fiat to crypto and vice-versa with its low costs and fast settlement improvements.

In addition, Dixon highlighted the Stellar-based use case developed with Tribal Credit which enables merchants in Mexico to send local currency payments to the United States. These payments are received by U.S.-based businesses in dollars which removes trading friction for small and medium-sized operations.

Related Reading | Stellar Development Foundation Launches New Account Model, How Users Will Benefit

Thus, potentially onboarding more companies onto the Stellar ecosystem. In addition, Leaf Global Fintech has developed a solution with a UNICEF-backed digital wallet that lets people save money in multiple currencies, Dixon said, to help refugees to protect themselves against inflation, move money across borders, and protect themselves against theft. Dixon concluded with the following:

Blockchain is real, it’s here, and it’s solving real problems. It’s time we start talking about how it’s already unlocking new opportunities for migrant workers, refugees, the unbanked, and small and medium businesses all over the globe.

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Ripple Competitor Announces Plans To Roll Out Smart Contracts in 2022

by Dailyhodl

Ripple competitor Stellar (XLM) is announcing plans to roll out smart contracts later this year.

Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) ecosystem head Justin Rice says smart contracts will enable a new suite of products and services on Stellar.

“There’s a lot of work to be done to get there, but at SDF we’re committed to researching and shepherding the development of the code and creating community engagement around an implementation.

The goal is to have Stellar remain one of the most accessible networks for developers so they can deliver high quality and safe applications to their users, while also allowing it to adapt and respond to the competitive blockchain landscape.”

Stellar is an open network for storing and moving money. The project’s native token, XLM, is used as a bridge currency between two fiat currencies when sending money abroad. XLM is trading at $0.192945 at time of writing, down 2.37% in the past 24 hours.

Tomer Weller, the vice president of tech strategy at Stellar, outlines the rough timeline for smart contract implementation in a new tweet.

“We’re aiming for a feature-complete test network by the end of 2022. Ultimately, the ecosystem will decide if and when to turn on smart contracts on Stellar.”

In October, the SDF announced a new partnership with the payments giant MoneyGram to use the Stellar blockchain to facilitate cross-border payments.

MoneyGram had previously entered into a partnership with Ripple, a Stellar competitor, in June 2019 for foreign exchange settlements and cross-border payments.

However, the payments giant suspended its use of XRP payments this past February in the wake of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple.

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Stellar To Deploy Smart Contracts By End Of 2022? XLM Reacts To The Upside

by NEWSBTC

Stellar (XLM) records a positive performance in 24-hours as the crypto market in general recovers from its sell-off. As of press time, XLM trades at $0.20 with a 4.8% profit in the last day.

Related Reading | Stellar Development Foundation Launches New Account Model, How Users Will Benefit

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XLM trends to the upside in the 4-hour chart. Source: XLMUSDT Tradingview

On January 25th, Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) Vice President of Technological Strategy Tomer Weller announced via Twitter the integration of smart contract on this network. With a tentative deployment date set by the end of 2022, this addition could transform XLM’s ecosystem and use cases.

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As Weller clarified, the SDF aims for a “feature-complete test network” for that period. However, he believes “the ecosystem” most decide when to roll-out smart contract capabilities on Stellar. Weller will host a Twitter Space today at 12:00 Pacific Time (PT) to provide more details. Weller said:

Stellar enables equitable access to the financial system. DeFi is becoming a major part of that system. DeFi isn’t new to Stellar. It’s been core to the protocol with a built in DEX from the get go (before “DEX” was popularized), and AMM functionality became available in ‘21.

The logical step of that development is to support the introduction smart contracts, Weller said, and take DeFi on Stellar to “the next level”. These capabilities could aid the network and its ecosystem to fulfill the vision of the SDF by lowering “the barrier of entry”.

In addition, developers working on this network will be able to create products with “trust-minimized functionality. More importantly, Stellar will no longer have to implement major protocol changes to deploy a product, dApp, or decentralized service.

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Weller also claimed the SDF is currently looking at smart contracts programming languages and Virtual Machines (VMs). These could be developed by the SDF or they could use an existing programming language.

Who Will Benefit The Most From Smart Contracts On Stellar?

The non-profit organization will have three priorities when selecting a programming language, as Weller said: safety, scalability, and equitable access. At the moment, the VP for Tech Strategy believes there is not one “off-the-shelf that fits the bill”.

In that sense, he claimed they are currently looking into existing networks and “learning a lot” to evaluate the components that “work”. The Stellar ecosystem will apparently have a voice at choosing this key element of its smart contract functionalities. Weller added:

For users, DeFi on Stellar means direct access to a global network of on and off-ramps. The latest player to join, MoneyGram, will provide crypto->cash conversions in 300,000(!) locations around the world.

Related Reading | How Stellar Will Host Ukraine’s CBDC Pilot Test With Tascombank

Users stand to be the most benefit from the potential integration with smart contracts. The SDF has also set out to provide developers with a “robust toolset” so that dApps on the network will be safe. In addition, the SDF will launch a grant program with the only objective of auditing smart contracts.

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Stellar Development Foundation Launches New Account Model, How Users Will Benefit

by NEWSBTC

Via an official blog post, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a new account model called Muxed. Created to remove friction and facilitate user interaction with the account model based on this network, and the multiple services build on top of it, the Muxed accounts seem to be an important improvement for the entire ecosystem.

Related Reading | Stellar Network Processes 1.8 Billion Transactions, Was 2021 Its Best Year Ever?

According to the post, a Muxed account is one that combines the GABC and 64-bit integer ID to create a “virtual” account under a traditional address. Due to its characteristics, a muxed account can be identified within a real account.

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Thus, if there is a service or product using Stellar to pool multiple accounts, they can now manage them with more ease and will be able to eliminate burdensome issues, such as meme problems. The SDF has called on “products and services built on Stellar” to check if the validators are compatible with the new account model and asked them to “come up with a plan to implement” muxed accounts into their system. The organization said:

Custodial services generally use muxed accounts to map incoming payments to an internal customer database. Businesses may use muxed accounts to map incoming payments to an invoice or customer account.

Other characteristics for muxed accounts, as revealed by the SBF, are the differences in its encoding, they will be 69 characters long and not 56 as a traditional account, and in their base values. As a result, Muxed accounts will have M as their first character rather than G.

Muxed To Improves Transaction Experience On Stellar

Per its GitHub repository, Stellar’s new account model could open more possibilities for the users, and all actors operating on this network and could finally remove the limitations of using a memo-based model:

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Experience shows that people frequently forget to include the memo ID, resulting in either lost funds or onerous support calls. Moreover, memo IDs are per transaction, not per occurrence of an account ID, which imposes restrictions on the use of multiplexed accounts. (…) By adding an optional memo ID to the account ID type, we make multiplexed (Muxed) accounts a first-class abstraction that can be used anywhere a normal account ID can be used.

This could significantly improve the way exchanges and custodial services operate with Stellar transactions, and users will save time and money as they will no longer need to manually participate in a transaction. The SBF revealed that muxed accounts was implemented in the Protocol 13 update.

This update was introduced in 2020, but muxed accounts remained hidden until yesterday, January 10th, 2022. Due to its incompatibility with older versions of the Stellar software, projects on this network were given time to update and adjust to the new model.

Related Reading | How Stellar Will Host Ukraine’s CBDC Pilot Test With Tascombank

As of press time, XLM trades at $0.22 with sideways movement in the 4-hour chart, as seen below.

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XLM moving sideways in the 4-hour chart. Source: XLMUSDT Tradingview

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Stellar Network Processes 1.8 Billion Transactions, Was 2021 Its Best Year Ever?

by NEWSBTC

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has published the end-of-year metrics for their ecosystem and the underlying network. Presented by Denelle Dixon, Executive Director, and CEO at the SDF, the metrics showed a significant increase across the board.

Related Reading | How Stellar Will Host Ukraine’s CBDC Pilot Test With Tascombank

In 2021, per the report by the SDF, the Stellar Network experienced a 32% rise in its number of total accounts with respect to 2020. The number of total accounts stands at 6 million.

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On the other hand, the Stellar Network has processed over 1.8 billion total operations. This represents a 127% increased since 2020. The total assets available on this ledger have risen from 8,639 to 90,297 which represents a 945% increase over the same period.

The SDF claims the rise over these metrics suggests there is a growing interest in the Stellar Network. In that sense, they added the following while showing more data on “relevant assets”:

It’s not just about raw network growth. We track growth in relevant assets – assets tethered to real financial instruments – and relevant asset transactions. Since the start of 2021, we’ve seen 11% of relevant assets, and a 2.3x increase in daily transaction volume of these assets.

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Source: SDF via Twitter

As a consequence, the Stellar ecosystem has expanded. The SDF records over 10 new anchors coming into the network during this year. This represents a 33% increase since 2020.

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The anchor services for this network stand at 30, as shown in the image below. Most of these entities are spread across the globe with a significant percentage in North America, Latin America, and Africa.

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Source: SDF via Twitter

2021 The Year Of Important Partnerships For Stellar

In 2021, the SDF saw the deployment of stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) on the Stellar Network. Managed by the Centre consortium, created by Coinbase and Circle, the USDC is one of the most important digital assets to transact in the crypto space.

This was one of Stellar most important partnerships this year, the ecosystem was leveraged by MoneyGram and other major companies. In addition, the SDF’s Enterprise Fund invested over $74 million in projects for companies, such as AirTM, Tala, and Wyre.

The community was a big part of this year’s progress for Stellar, as reported by the SDF. This organization worked with over 50 universities and thousands of students everywhere for hackathons and other activities.

The initiative Stellar Quest welcomed new developers for this ecosystem and generated over 2,700, per the report. In that, the Stellar Community Fund was also a great success which granted over $4 million in the XLM token to be used for developing DeFi, NFTs, and many more use cases on this network.

The SDF celebrated a “tremendous” 2021 and presented its strategic objectives for 2022. This includes increasing Stellar’s network capacity and innovation, increasing the level of participation, and “demanding and promoting diversity and inclusion”.

Related Reading | Stellar To Power VISA’s New Partnership, XLM Begins Breakout

As of press time, XLM trades at $0,28 with a 1.2% profit in the last 24-hours.

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XLM moving sideways in the 4-hour chart. Source: XLMUSDT Tradingview

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Will XRP’s Primary Competitor Outperform Crypto Markets in 2022? Coin Bureau Updates Outlook on Stellar Lumens (XLM)

by Dailyhodl

The host of crypto channel Coin Bureau is unveiling his outlook for Stellar (XLM) next year after the XRP competitor’s lackluster performance in 2021.

In a new video, pseudonymous analyst Guy tells his 1.78 million YouTube subscribers that while Stellar (XLM) doubled in price this year, the altcoin’s gains are “peanuts” compared to the performance of other crypto assets.

According to Guy, Stellar’s poor price performance can be traced to one key reason: sell pressure, specifically from the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and growth of the Stellar network.

“The foundation only received $3 million at its inception. To my knowledge, it hasn’t received any additional funding since then. This means that the foundation has been relying on its sales of XLM to pay its expenses and fund the expansion of Stellar’s ecosystem, and this isn’t speculation either. The foundation’s XLM  spending is clearly detailed on its mandate page, and I applaud it for its transparency.

The latest figures suggest that the foundation has spent over 5 billion of its 30 billion XLM so far, and the way back machine reveals that about 3 billion of this XLM were spent over the last year.

What’s more is that a paragraph at the end of the mandate notes, ‘as we said when we first announced this framework in November 2019, we intend to use or disperse most of these Lumens within 10 years, ideally sooner.’ In other words, the sell pressure isn’t going to stop any time soon.”

Guy also says that on top of the sustained selling pressure, XLM does not appear to have many demand drivers. Institutional investors are shying away from the crypto asset possibly due to the regulatory uncertainty related to XRP, according to the crypto analyst.

However, Guy says that favorable results from SDF’s partnership with MoneyGram may allow XLM to get back to its January 3rd, 2018 record high of $0.87.

In October, the remittance giant announced that it is integrating the Stellar blockchain into its network, enabling cash funding and payouts in local currency for consumers using Stellar USD Coin (USDC).

“The only demand for XLM is coming from the institutions the Stellar Development Foundation has partnered with and these partnerships are only starting to reach their final form. On the bright side, this paints a pretty bullish picture for XLM in 2022, and I could see XLM re-testing its early 2018 highs if its MoneyGram partnership delivers on its promises. Stellar also has no shortage of upcoming milestones, which could attract both retail and institutional interest.”

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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How Stellar Will Host Ukraine’s CBDC Pilot Test With Tascombank

by NEWSBTC

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has been working with the Ukrainian government on their national Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for a while. The collaboration has started to produce results as the SDF, Bitt, and TASCOMBANK recently deployed a pilot project for the electronic hryvnia on this network.

Related Reading | An Introduction To Stellar And XLM: Mission, Control, And Consensus

Per a press release, the partners will test the CBDC’s use cases and its programmable capabilities. These will be leveraged to pay employees at a company called Diia, and to perform payments to merchants and individuals.

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According to the release published by Bitt, the project has been under the supervision of the National Bank of Ukraine aided by their Ministry of Digital Transformation. In that sense, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Oleksandr Bornyakov commented the following on their CBDC’s test phase:

This pilot project will serve as a technological basis for the issuance of electronic money and is the next key step to advance innovation of payment and financial infrastructure in Ukraine.

During the trial on Stellar, the partners will also test the capacity to issue digital currency with “asset-control capabilities for issue”s”. The banking institution will be in charge of testing the implementation of the hryvnia on Bitt’s Digital Currency Management System (DCMS).

The latter company has been in charge of developing a stablecoin with its payment rails for the National Bank of Belize, and it’s behind the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) initiative to launch a CBDC. The target for this project, per its official website, is to increase “opportunities for financial growth”.

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Similar to this project, the digital hryvnia will use the “moderns software techniques” and alleged scalable and performant benefits from the DCMS. This system will “protect” the user’s data while regulatory bodies still can access “needed” information, the official website adds the following on their DCMS:

Security is designed-in, to use secure defaults, minimize attack surfaces and provide defense-in-depth. Independent modules allow each component to scale independently of others, allowing automatic adjustment to meet variable demands.

Stellar Spearheads Ukranian Initiative

With its DCMS system Bitt will provide secure minting, currency manager, and a monetary transaction network. Thus, tackling three of the most important items in every CBDC project. Volodymyr Dubey, Chairman of the for TASCOMBANK, said:

Cooperation with Bitt to build on Stellar allows us to connect our core banking system with blockchain-based infrastructure, creating an ecosystem that includes a full range of banking products and operations with electronic currency on the Stellar blockchain.

Dubey also expressed excitement to improve the country’s financial products by using virtual assets. The Ukranian Central Bank and TASCOMBANK have long-term strategies that include innovation supported on blockchain technology and the digital economy.

Executive Director and CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation Denelle Dixon added the following:

Stellar is an open network that was designed with asset issuance in mind, and is uniquely suited to assets like the electronic hryvnia. It offers issuers, like TASCOMBANK, a suite of controls that they can configure for their asset control needs while maintaining the interoperability and flexibility of an open ledger.

Related Reading | Stellar To Launch New Europe-Africa Payment Corridor With This Partner

As of press time, XLM trades at $0,26 with a 2.9% loss in the past 24 hours.

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XLM on a downtrend in the 4-hour chart. Source: XLMUSDT Tradingview

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Ukraine’s Central Bank Runs Digital Currency Pilot Using Stellar

by Decrypt

In brief

  • Bitcoin is popular in Ukraine.

  • The country legally recognized cryptocurrency this year.

  • It’s taking the next step in creating a central bank digital currency.

The Stellar Development Foundation announced today that the Stellar blockchain will be used to pilot an electronic version of the hryvnia, the national currency of Ukraine. The pilot, being carried out by FinTech firm Bitt and TASCOMBANK, will be overseen by the country’s central bank with the encouragement of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

In January, the ministry announced it had partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation, which promotes the use of XLM cryptocurrency and the Stellar blockchain, to create a central bank digital currency—something the National Bank of Ukraine had been exploring since 2017. CBDCs leverage decentralized ledgers such as blockchains to enable quicker, more efficient payments in the national currency.

“This pilot project will serve as a technological basis for the issuance of electronic money, and is the next key step to advance innovation of payment and financial infrastructure in Ukraine,” said Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Bornyakov in a press release.

Ukraine’s relatively quick path from partnership to trial means it is well ahead of most other European countries and the European Central Bank in developing a digital currency. Most central banks are still researching potential use cases of CBDCs.

France is the farthest along of any European nation. It recently ran a cross-border payments experiment in conjunction with a Swiss bank. Outside of Europe, China is in the middle of testing a digital currency, as are a handful of other countries, according to research site CBDCTracker.org. Thus far, The Bahamas is the only one to hit the launch button; its central bank rolled out sand dollars to the Caribbean nation’s nearly 400,000 citizens in 2020.

Cryptocurrency is popular in Ukraine, both with the people and politicians. Ukraine has the highest crypto adoption rate in the world, according to a September 2020 ranking from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. And in 2019, the government created the Ministry of Digital Transformation, with the agenda of widening digital literacy and increasing internet accessibility. 

The ministry has broadened its mandate to incorporate cryptocurrencies, drafting a bill earlier this year to legalize Bitcoin and other crypto; the legislation provided legal protections to holders and gave the greenlight to banks to provide services to crypto firms.

The ministry believes that crypto-friendly policies will attract a new range of financial services to the country. TASCOMBANK Chairman Volodymyr Dubey agrees. 

“With the rapidly growing impact of virtual assets on our everyday life and economic landscape, it is essential to utilize the advantages of blockchain technology and new related products as a part of the bank’s long-term market strategy,” he said.

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Stellar partners tap USDC for remittances between Europe and Africa

by Cointelegraph

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has announced that it will facilitate a new remittance channel between Europe and Africa using the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin.

On Monday, the SDF announced that global payments technology company Flutterwave will use the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin on the Stellar network to simplify remittances between Africa and Europe.

Flutterwave will work alongside Stellar’s principal European Union payments partner, Paris-based money transfer operator, Tempo Payments.

Olugbenga Agboola, CEO at Flutterwave, commented that it is more expensive to send money to sub-Saharan Africa than to any other region in the world. He added that the new partnership will help to expand the network and “bring all-important, cost-effective money transfer services to African business owners.”

Flutterwave claims to have processed more than 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion to date, serving over 290,000 businesses, including Uber, Booking.com and Facebook. The firm already has an infrastructure in more than 33 African countries, including Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa.

The SDF has been targeting Africa for roughly one year, with the foundation teaming up with East African payments firm ClickPesa in November 2020. ClickPesa provides on- and off-ramps to the banking systems of Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda.

Stellar and its partners face stiff competition as there are already several payments companies operating in Africa, including WorldRemit, Azimo, Transferwise, Payoneer and Xoom.

Africa has become a key market for payments companies because much of the population remains unbanked. However, remittances have fallen during pandemic-induced lockdowns, with Africa.com reporting a 28% drop in remittances to Nigeria last year.

The outlet also predicted that more transfers will be made in cryptocurrencies by 2025, adding that digital assets are likely to penetrate Africa’s remittance market despite the exclusionary policies of local governments.

Related: Crypto in Africa: Opportunities and challenges, explained

In February, Stellar announced that it had integrated Circle’s USDC stablecoin. USD Coin has seen monumental growth in 2021, with its market cap surging 733% since the beginning of the year to tag $32.5 billion.

Stellar’s native token, XLM, has gained 2.2% over the past 24 hours to trade at $0.386, according to CoinGecko. However, XLM is still down 56% from its January 2018 all-time high of $0.875.