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This new year, I want to broaden my knowledge about promising altcoins so that I may gain the confidence to diversify my portfolio. But there are so many coins out there, so where shall I begin? I recognise that it’s important to just get started, so why not I begin with Stellar Lumens? Something about how COINBASE offered $10 worth of Lumens in its Learn and Earn programme has fascinated me. I mean, Stellar must be doing decent for it to warrant such an impressive incentive.
aims to bridge various financial systems so that overlooked underprivileged communities and unbanked people can have the option of sending each other money quickly and cheaply. It was initially built on the Ripple protocol, which isn’t surprising when you learn that the co-founder of Stellar, Jed McCaleb, also played a pivotal role in developing Ripple.
2) This is why there are several striking similarities between Ripple and Stellar, one of which is how they both harness distributed LEDGER technology to bring about swift and cost-effective cross-border payments, thus enhancing the interconnectivity among different financial systems. However, some glaring distinctions exist. While Stellar aims to reach out to the common man, Ripple targets banks. In addition, Ripple pioneered the concept of the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA), in which verified and trusted nodes approve financial transactions, Stellar brought the FBA concept to the next level as it proclaimed to be the "world's first provably safe FBA". This process helps to keep your digital assets safe.
3) Stellar disrupted the remittance industry because it created its own cryptocurrency called lumen that empowered people to send money to their loved ones across the miles without losing part of their value through multiple transfers. Traded as XLM, lumen functions as a universal currency translator. What this means is that people who remit currency A will have this currency converted into lumens, which will be in turn converted to currency B used by their loved ones. Most mind-bogglingly, all this action takes place within 10 seconds or even less, which means that your loved ones get their money fast and easy!
Stellar launched its lumen network in 2014, starting with a bang by creating 105 billion lumens. Because Stellar was a non-profit organisation, it strove to keep just 5 percent of lumens for its stakeholders while giving away the remaining 95 percent. However, in order to exercise more precise control over how it wanted to utilise lumens over a ten-year period, Stellar burnt 55 billion lumens in 2019.
5) Currently, about 20 billion lumens are in circulation whereas the remaining 35 billions are retained by the Stellar Development Foundation to support the development and growth of the open-source Stellar network. But these 35 billions will enter the public markets in the upcoming years, probably with a focus on the markets in Latin America and Africa.
6) We all know IBM as a leading player in the computing industry, but it actually also dabbles in fintech services, offering services to banks like Australia's National Australia Bank, Spain's BBVA, and Indonesia's Bank Danamon. To facilitate fast and efficient cross-border payments among banks, it is using STR coin on the Stellar blockchain.
7) As a sign of the utility of the Stellar blockchain, $6 billion worth of USDC was launched on it in 2011. Interested businesses can apply to use Stellar USDC as a mode of payment by opening a Circle account here
8) Besides Coinbase, you can buy lumens at Kraken, Huobi, Gate.io, and Liquid, among other crypto exchanges.
I hope you found my research useful!
