On July 19th, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin (LTC), congratulated Stellar (XLM) on passing LTC’s marketcap and edging it out from the number 6 spot according to coinmarketcap.com. Charlie stated the following via Twitter:

Congrats to Stellar on passing Litecoin’s marketcap. That said, it really doesn’t make sense to compare marketcaps of coins that are “printed”, b/c they have an inflated marketcap. Maybe I’m old school, but I only care about decentralized mineable coins.

Since then, XLM has retained the number 6 spot as can be seen in the screenshot below.

Doing the math, XLM need only be valued at $0.2464 to surpass the current market capitalization of EOS. This value could become a reality due to the following factors that has put XLM ahead in terms of market momentum.

Potential listing on Coinbase

On July 13th, the team at Coinbase informed the crypto-verse that it was exploring the addition of 5 digital assets on its platform. They include Cardano (ADA), Stellar (XLM), Basic Attention Token (BAT), ZCash (ZEC) and Ox (ZRX). Given the fact that a similar announcement – made in June – considering the listing of Ethereum Classic (ETC) actually materialized, then there is a high chance that the group of 5 will be added on Coinbase. Once this happens, the only way is up for XLM.

facebook Rumors

On Friday, August 10th, a story broke that Stellar had partnered with the social media giant known as facebook. The rumors had hinted that the two firms would work on the creation of a Stellar-based blockchain solution for facebook. The latter company has since denied the partnership rumors but the question still lingers in the crypto-verse.

The IBM factor

The Stellar foundation and IBM have been in a solid partnership for quite sometime now. Notable collaborations include the following:

IBM working on a stable-coin that is built on the Stellar blockchain

IBM winning a contract for a 5 year deal to develop blockchain solutions in collaboration with the Australian government

IBM running 9 Stellar nodes to settle cross-border transactions. IBM is also in partnerships with approximately 20 global central banks

Veridium Labs and IBM using the Stellar blockchain to track global Carbon Emissions

In conclusion, the Stellar project and coin seem to have a lot going for them in the past few months. These developments will most likely result in XLM edging out EOS from the number 5 spot. Another possibility is XLM ending up surpassing XRP and claiming the number 3 spot.

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any opinion herein should be taken as is. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available.