XLM - Stellar Lumens. The best alt coin to invest in ?

XLM
$0.29

Stellar Lumens is a cryptocurrency that has some very unique things all bundled together in one place. While some label it as a less centralized version of Ripple, I would argue that there is much more to this story that that. Jed McCaleb created Ripple and Mt Gox before creating Stellar Lumens. Jed used all the knowledge he obtained from being the creator and head developer at Ripple to build Stellar Lumens a whole lot better.

What is Stellar Lumens ? Stellar is what Ripple is…. A network that connects banks….but it is also a whole lot more. They also connect businesses and individuals to that same network. I will also share below how I feel that Stellar and not Ripple will be the eventual winner in the financial space.
Stellar is a platform. XLM competes with Ethereum by offering a platform for developers to build applications on. Kin chose to leave Ethereum a few months back and Mobius chose to build its ICO on Stellar recently as well. There are lots of ICO’s lining up to run on the Stellar network.
Stellar is also a decentralized exchange. If you have ever talked to anyone who used the interface of Mt Gox you will likely hear them say that they liked it as well or better than any other exchange they have used to-date. The creator of that interface has spent a long time building a decentralized exchange on the Stellar network. This exchange will be the first to offer pairs of trade in all the major fiat currencies on the world. This could be a big deal.

So with Stellar Lumens, you get a better Ripple, a direct competitor to Ethereum, and potentially a top decentralized exchange with fiat trading.

Lets talk about the aspect of Stellar that is similar to Ripple.
The VERY MOST important reason why XLM and not XRP will become the network chosen by the global financial institutions and central banks is that XRP is essentially owned by 3 investors and that XRP acts in a FOR PROFIT manner. The central banks and major financial institutions are NOT going to use a system like XRP when they can get the same system (only upgraded) that operates as a non for profit and is actually very decentralized.
IBM has relationships with every major bank and most central banks around the world. IBM and Stellar have been meeting with these groups according to a recent interview with Jed McCaleb. There are 6 trillion dollars of cross boarder payments every day under the SWIFT current system. This is a growing number. For XLM to be used for this sole purpose, the value of XLM in total market cap would need to be at least a large percentage of this value. If you include hodlers and other real world use cases (banking the unbanked) the numbers needed would get considerably higher.

Jed explains how he started over on XRP’s code on the above youtube from earlier this week in Tel Aviv. He made a lot of improvements. It scales better. Its faster. It is easier to program on. XLM is just better than XRP.

With the uncertainty surrounding the ICO market and the SEC….I am not sure if there is a tremendous amount of value derived from being an ICO launching platform. That being said, XLM has a very robust platform that app builders have chosen to develop on. Stellar has a niche in the platform ecosystem for simpler projects that utilize speed. Jed explains this as well in the above linked youtube from Tel Aviv.

https://stellarterm.com/
This link is to the Stellar trading platform - and decentralized exchange.
Stellar is going to be adding fiat trading pairs of all nationalities. Like XRP, XLM has a trading exchange already built onto the network….so adding this decentralized network was a natural fit. MtGox is back in the headlines this week for bad reasons (again)....but the interface was considered to be very user friendly and beloved by its traders. The fiat pair trades put XLM on its own playing field so it should be interesting to see how this develops.

Partnerships:

https://www.stellar.org/about/directory

This link takes you to the list of partners XLM has in place. It is literally a who’s who list of remittance players around the world. Stellar has been focusing on countries that are in need of this “bank the unbanked” current use case for XLM.

In my opinion, XLM is the most complete alt coin in crypto. Jed McCaleb is one of the most capable developers on Earth. There is a lot of confusion and a lack of knowledge about what these projects are capable of. I feel that this lack of knowledge has caused a large mispricing of both XRP and XLM. Over time we will see XLM surpass XRP in market cap…..the real flippening.
Bitcoin is trying to destroy the financial markets as we know them. I see XLM as being the gateway for the existing financial world to join the game and play along. We could see BTC and XLM be the largest market cap cryptocurrencies in the coming decade and beyond.

I will leave you with this interview of Jed by Kevin Rose on Block Zero. He discusses how IBM is setting up meeting with major banks and central banks alike.
http://www.blockzero.show/