The State of the Market: Following yesterday’s surge, cryptocurrency markets are struggling to maintain their upward price momentum. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have posted a 0.1% gain and a 5% loss respectively. The total digital asset market cap is hovering just under $290 billion, after failing to break through the psychological threshold of $300 billion. Among the top ten coins by market cap, Stellar (XLM) and Cardano (ADA) are the clear standouts, with XLM climbing almost 15% on the day and ADA rallying 7.2% over the past 24 hours.

1) According to a recent announcement, the IBM-backed cryptocurrency Stellar Lumens (XLM) now has its own fiat ‘anchor,’ meaning that USD can be exchanged directly for XLM tokens. The addition of a USD to XLM pairing is aimed at increasing enterprise adoption of the stellar network and was reportedly made possible by IBM’s recent partnership with the financial services firm Stronghold. The news has had a significant and positive effect on the price of XLM, which rose almost 15% today (read more).

2) U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell testified today to a group of senators on the second day of “The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress.” Powell, who has historically been unfriendly to crypto, maintained his unfavorable stance, remarking “relatively unsophisticated investors see the asset go up in price, and they think: ‘This is great; I’ll buy this.’ In fact, there is no promise of that.” He continued that cryptocurrencies did not hold the promise of a viable currency because they have no ‘intrinsic’ value. However, the argument was odd considering the U.S. dollar also has no ‘intrinsic’ value (read more).

3) Cardano (ADA), the No. 8 cryptocurrency by market cap, increased by more than 13% today. The project, which goes head-to-head with the likes of Ethereum, was recently featured in a report by eToro exchange, which found that that Cardano was “leading the charge … in Blockchain 3.0,” pointing to a more “scalable” and “flexible” network versus its larger peers, Ethereum and Bitcoin. While Cardano is popular among financial institutions for its secure transactions, the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly selecting Cardano too. The ADA price has been on the rise since last Friday when Coinbase announced it wanted to add the coin to its trading platform (read more).

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