On Wednesday (March 13th), Coinbase announced that Stellar Lumen (XLM) had been added to Coinbase Pro, its platform for professional/experienced traders/investors.

Stellar is “an open-source, decentralized protocol for digital currency to fiat currency transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies;” this protocol, was designed by Jed McCaleb (a former CTO of Ripple) and Joyce Kim, is supported by the nonprofit organization Stellar Development Foundation. Lumens (XLM) “are the native asset of the Stellar network.”

Launch of XLM on Coinbase Pro

Coinbase said that after 1pm PT (i.e. 20:00 UTC), Coinbase Pro would “begin accepting inbound transfers of XLM” (noting that these transfer “require the specification of an XLM memo”), and that only after “sufficient supply of XLM is established on the platform, trading on the XLM/USD, XLM/EUR, and XLM/BTC order books will start in phases, beginning with post-only mode and proceeding to full trading should our metrics for a healthy market be met.” Also, we were told that XLM support would be “immediately available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State.”

Here is how Coinbase described the Stellar platform in its blog post:

“Stellar’s cryptocurrency, the Stellar Lumen (XLM), powers the Stellar payment network. Stellar aims to connect banks, payment systems and individuals quickly and reliably. Since its launch in 2014, its vision has been to unite the world’s financial infrastructure so that money can flow quickly and cheaply between banks, businesses, and people. The Internet connected the world’s computers so that information could be shared globally. Stellar aims to do the same for money.”

Finally, it should be pointed out that XLM is not yet available on Coinbase Consumer (Coinbase.com) or via the Coinbase mobile app for iOS and Android.

At press time (08:35 UTC on March 14th), according to data from CryptoCompare, XLM is trading at $0.1107, up 6.24% in the past 24-hour period:

IBM’s March 19th Announcement

The listing of XLM on Coinbase Pro comes 15 days after XRP got listed on the same platform and six days before Jesse Lund, IBM’s Vice President of Blockchain and Digital Currencies, will make an announcement about his company’s cross-border payments solution “IBM Blockchain World Wire” (which runs on the Stellar network) at the Money20/20 Asia conference (March 19–21) in Singapore. He will joined on stage by Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Stellar, Ripple and Mt Gox. Lund hinted at this upcoming announcement during an interview with Australia’s largest comparison site Finder.com.au that was published on February 20th.

Here is what Lund said about Blockchain World Wire at that interview:

“The architecture of World Wire is really a cross-border payment network, the magic of which is the ability to send a payment message instruction saying ‘Hey, I’m sending you something; get ready!’ and on the other end, the receiver is making sure that who you are sending it to is not some nefarious actor or bad actor, but once that happens, and that happens really fast, then we send the value along, and that transfer of value is made possible by an ecosystem of digital settlement instruments, of which [Stellar] lumens is one…

IBM’s long game in this is to be the network operator… So, the subscribers, the customers, if you will, of World Wire are market makers who really provide the pay in, pay out locations, and they themselves have corporate clients and probably retail clients. So, we’re really providing a kind of conduit through which money can flow in real-time.”

Featured Image Courtesy of Stellar Development Foundation