We covered Stellar Lumens (XLM) recently and wondered if someday it could compete with Ripple (XRP) similar to a Visa – Mastercard – American Express situation. With Ripple partnering with American Express and a possibly debunked rumor of Stellar Lumens working with Visa, the idea did not seem that far fetched.

Stellar Lumens – Ripple comparison

Now with Ripple (XRP) faltering since blowing up to #4, Stellar Lumens (XLM) has been slowly rising the ranks of marketcap and is now ready to launch into the top 10. Yesterday we saw IOTA blow past Ripple for #4 and at press time there seems to be no stopping IOTA. The launch of the limited data exchange has propelled IOTA from unknown to well known.

We called IOTA passing Ripple – check it out

And we said the news for IOTA was HUGE

December 7th we are set to get news from Stellar Lumens (XLM). Rumors abound about this news and we would love not to speculate but that is not our style at cryptogazette. Remember the founder of Ripple (XRP) is Jed McCaleb who left the project after differences with the board. He went on to create Stellar Lumens by taking what he felt was the best of Ripple and improving it. He has ties to the payment processing economy including many of the banks currently working with Ripple. Then this tweet shows up on the official Stellar Lumens Twitter feed.

Kicking off the #Stellar #Seoul trip with #InsideFintech conference. Lively discussion on future of #payments with Andrew Park from @Visa, Joseph Chan from @AsiaPay, and Ho-Yeol Na from Kakao Pay. Major themes: collaborative platform, invisible payment and #blockchain adoption. pic.twitter.com/RRYEhAL1SE — Ella Qiang (@ellaqiang9) December 2, 2017

With saying Stellar was meeting with Visa, they just happen to be meeting with Visa and participating in a discussion about blockchain payments while in Seoul, South Korea. Let the rumors continue to swirl. Not to stop there but while in Seoul the founder of Steller is also meeting with Coinone, a large crypto exchange in South Korea and 5th largest in the world by volume. I am not good at math but December 7th falls directly between the discussion with Visa and the discussion with Coinone. There may be something here.

What does this mean for Stellar Lumens if it is added to Coinone? The most recent example is IOTA. November 28th is was added to Coinone exchange followed by the launch of the data exchange. Below is the chart of market activity since the addition to Coinone.

What we see is a bump in volume from the Coinone listing. As South Korea is the largest crypto market in the world this is not surprising. Then word of the Data exchange launch December 4 brings the huge move everyone is talking about including a 100% 24 hour increase. The news was more important than the listing in this case.

What does this mean for Stellar Lumens?

While the addition of a Coinone listing is important it was not the most important for IOTA. Coinone represents only the second exchange where IOTA can be traded for fiat currency, the Korean Won. This is an important difference between IOTA and Stellar Lumens though.

Currently Stellar Lumens does not have a major market option to exchange XLM for fiat currency. Coinone, if listed, would represent the first opportunity for that exchange. While limited to South Korea and some Chinese traders it is a means to increase demand for the currency. IOTA already had a large fiat exchange for USD so the addition of Coinone simply for that purpose did not have a large effect outside of South Korea. For XLM it is the opposite and may significantly increase demand.

December 7th will bring news. At this point we can only speculate what it may be with many possibilities. The perfect moon launch would be a partnership with Visa and a listing on Coinone. Already up on the hope for news, Stellar Lumens is 30% higher today. At a market cap of $2.4 billion it could increase 500% before reaching Ripple’s market cap and 700% before catching IOTA. Here is hoping for the moonshot.



