GETTY Stellar has had a great start to 2018 as it has risen by 65 percent since Friday

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Stellar has had a great start to 2018 as it has risen by 65 percent since Friday and has now received a place in the top 10 cryptocurrencies ranked by market capitalisation. It currently holds a market capitalisation of $10billion. Market capitalisation refers to the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding shares. Stellar’s transactions take only two to five seconds and allows users to quickly exchange government-backed currencies, like turning US dollars in to euros. Stellar coins are officially called lumens or XLM.

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IBM, the computer manufacturing company is using Stellar’s network in order to develop a cross-border payments system. Deloitte, the consulting firm, is also a partner. As bitcoin’s price has been shaky over the past two weeks other cryptocurrencies have been making a name for themselves. Both stellar and ripple would be placed in this camp. Still, bitcoin enjoyed good news today as Peter Thiel who runs Founders Fund, a PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor, has bought millions of dollars in bitcoin. The two cryptocurrencies share the same founder, Jed McCaleb. Mr McCaleb also created Mt.Gox, a bitcoin exchange in Tokyo that was founded in 2010. He sold Mt. Got in 2011 to Mark Karpeles who suffered from a massive hack and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2014.