Our Stellar Lumens price forecast of 4 USD in 2018 is the newest addition to what has been so far our successful series of Cryptocurrency forecasts. We have previously provided forecasts for leading cryptocurrencies, and all of them came true. In this article, we review Stellar Lumens’ fundamentals and the factors behind our Stellar Lumens price forecast of 4 USD in 2018. Note that we published, on December 30th 2018, a new and revised Stellar Lumens Price Forecast 2019.

To assess the current strength of Cryptocurrencies and their future potential, our Research Team like to look at the following 3 criteria:

Scalability and cost for transactions

The intrinsic value of the Cryptocurrency and the underlying Technology

The leadership and Development Team behind the Cryptocurrency.

We will assess Stellar Lumens (XLM) based on those exact criterias.

Stellar Lumens Price Forecast for 2018: The fundamental picture

Leadership and Development Team

Founded by Jed McCaleb a respected figure in the Cryptocurrency world and backed since early days by Silicon Valley’s rising star Stripe. Stripe actually announced yesterday plans to phase out Bitcoin and add support for Lumens.

Stellar has build a strong network of partnerships as you can see in their partnership page and an impressive yet relevant Board and advisory team. They are also part of the Linux Foundation’s HyperLedger Project with IBM to build open source blockchain solutions for cross-border payment infrastructures.

But what really stood out to us when looking into Stellar as an organization and Lumens specifically, is the professionalism of the leadership and the development Team. We saw a team that is aware of the current challenges in the Cryptocurrency market, backed by relevant and solid partnerships, focused on finding solutions and at the same time passionate about building something that will deliver value for users and investors.

A simple look at Stellar’s roadmap gives a good idea and important information about what this Team is trying to achieve.

Scalability and Transaction Cost

According to Stellar:

Lumens can handle a thousand operations a second. Stellar’s consensus protocol is provably safe. (See Mazières, 2015—a paper so good it still makes the front page of hackernews.) Our last transaction settled in 4.96 seconds

When it comes to speed, Ripple has the Top spot and Lumens is the next in line. When it comes to cost, Lumens has the lowest cost with Ripple next in line.

Intrinsic Value

When assessing the intrinsic value of a cryptocurrency, we consider the use and volumes as the best reflection of the current and projected intrinsic value. The projects mentioned above are key to spreading the use and adoption of Lumens therefore increasing its value over time. The key for the adoption to continue (and not just peak and free fall) is scalability, speed and cost of transactions. Those are the key factors investors (especially those in for the long HODL) should keep an eye on.

Another factor that caught our attention when trying to understand XLM or Lumens intrinsic value is the fact that they support ICOs (while offering low transaction fees and fast settlements) and the planned Lightening Networks integration in 2018. We expect this to be an important success factor for this Cryptocurrency in 2018.

As you can see below, the rise in Stellar’s XLM trading volume was simply spectacular and will likely continue because of the factors mentioned above. Mind you figures such as the one below are to be taken with a grain of salt. Although they are absolutely representative of the timeframe underlined, things move so fast in Cryptoland that they do not necessarily guarantee it will continue to look the same.

That’s where thorough research and staying up-to date like we are trying to offer our subscribers through our Blockchain research service is key to making sure you know what you are invested in and its potential.

Stellar Lumens Price Forecast for 2018 Based on Price Charts

The price action for Stellar Lumens is solid. We have a long consolidation followed by a strong upwards movement. As we are writing this article, XLMUSD is breaking out from the Bull flag in the chart below:

For a long term perspective, we can see in the following chart that 4 USD is very likely in 2018 provided the Team continues on delivering on their commitments, no major security flaws in their code (watch also the exchanges supporting Lumens) and of course the overall sector performance. And always remember, investing in Cryptocurrency is a high risk high reward investment. They key is to know what you are investing in, score the lowest entries and stick to charts so you don’t panic sell.