Disclaimer: The datasets shared in the following article have been compiled from a set of online resources and do not reflect AMBCrypto’s own research on the subject.
Introduced in 2014, Stellar facilitates cross-border transfer of money through its decentralized blockchain solutions, with its native crypto XLM acting as the building block for its financial infrastructure. Targeted more towards individuals rather than institutions, the application facilitates the transfer of small amounts.
A simple platform, Stellar has become popular among users due to its user-friendly interface. It is also pretty fast in enabling cross-border transactions as quickly as within 5 seconds. Like all the blockchains, it is decentralized where nobody has complete control over the network.
Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of Ripple, launched the Stellar system in 2014 along with former lawyer Joyce Kim.
Acting as a decentralized currency exchange, Stellar helps you track all of your assets with an orderbook. You can sell, buy and manage all of your assets here, with XLM acting as an intermediate currency for paying transaction fees. The currency is very useful for the users because it helps you reduce transaction costs.
The Stellar network makes transactions seamless and reduces fees for micro-payments and remittances in order to make financial services affordable and accessible to the world.
Transactions on the Stellar platform are performed swiftly due to the ease of use associated with XLM. The cryptocurrency not only makes transactions seamless for the sender and the recipient, but it also ensures that transactions are secure.
Jed McCaleb, Co-founder and CTO of Stellar, said in an interview to CoinMarketCap that XLM is used in a fundamental way for the network. “Maybe that affects the price, maybe price is a secondary indicator of how useful the underlying protocol is in some way… But I think that the trend is there: that where price and utility can come into play,” he added.
XLM is listed on a number of crypto-exchanges including Binance, eToro, Huobi Global, CoinTiger, FTX, OKEx. This shows that the currency is an increasingly accepted choice of investors now.
A total of 100 billion XLMs were issued when the Stellar network was launched in 2015. In 2019, the group announced that it was burning over half of the cryptocurrency’s supply. Stellar mentions on its website that currently, there are around 50 billion XLMs in existence; 20 billion XLMs are in circulation and 30 billion XLMs are retained by the Stellar Development Foundation for project development. Nothing more will be created.
In an interview in March 2022, Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon said that despite its ongoing military conflict with Russia, Ukraine is still working with Stellar on its central bank digital currency (CBDC). The progress, however, has not been at the expected speed due to the crisis. She added that Stellar is “talking to the administration about things that we can do to help with … humanitarian aid needs.” She also commended Ukraine’s decision to accept cryptocurrency donations for aid.
Also, it was only recently that XLM got listed on the leading cryptocurrency exchange Robinhood, significantly spiking its price.
Due to its increasing adoption, XLM is among the top-30 cryptocurrencies in the world right now, with a market capitalization of over $3 billion.
Why these projections matter
Where Stellar trumps other financial platforms is its low transaction fees which have drawn a huge number of cryptocurrency users to it. It is one of the few blockchain networks that has been successful in collaborating with large tech corporations such as Deloitte and IBM. Stellar, in partnership with IBM, launched a project that enables fintechs to engage in financial transactions using assets such as stablecoins.
In 2016, Deloitte announced a partnership with Stellar, along with four other blockchain networks, to provide new technological capabilities to its global financial institution clientbase.
In June 2018, the Fortune reported that New York financial regulators approved Stellar Lumens to trade on the itBit exchange, the first time the state’s authorities have given it the green light.
In October 2021, IBM partnered with Stellar to facilitate cross-border payments by banks. The system uses XLM as a bridge currency for transactions and it has been successful in the South Pacific region.
In October 2021, Flutterwave, a global payments technology company, also announced two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network. The step is a major step in Stellar’s expansion in the global market.
It also succeeded in receiving certification from the Islamic scholars of Bahrain in 2018, aiming to integrate the technology into the field of sharia-compliant financial products, reported Reuters.
“We have been looking to work with companies that facilitate remittances, including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It’s a huge market,” said Lisa Nestor, the then-director of partnerships at Stellar. Since the Middle-East and South Asian regions are key areas of growth for the group where a lot of countries are run on a sharia-compliant system, this is a major success for Stellar.
Another prominent feature of Stellar is that it gives power to the community to decide what project(s) the blockchain should focus on.
We will now briefly give an overview of the key performance indicators of XLM such as price and market capitalization. We will then summarize what the world’s leading crypto-analysts have to say about the future of this currency, along with its Fear & Greed Index.
XLM’s Price, Market Cap and everything in between
XLM’s price has hiked significantly over the last few years. Back in 2018-2019, it kept falling below its previous ATH of around $0.93 (recorded in early January 2018). It was only in 2021 that its price again began to rise, hitting a price level of over $0.7 around mid-May. However, as the crypto-currency market collapsed in the second quarter of 2022, XLM went into a bearish dive.
At the time of writing, it was trading at $0.104, with a market capitalization of $2.60 billion.
Source: XLM/USD, TradingView
The market capitalization of the cryptocurrency follows its price trends throughout. In early January 2018, it was nearly $9 billion and it skyrocketed to as high as $16.5 billion (May 2021) during the crypto-boom of 2021. In fact, it was performing fairly well in 2022 too until the market crashed during the year’s second quarter.
Stellar has seen many growth spurts over the past few years, such as when Mercado Bitcoin announced its use of the platform. In less than a year, Stellar housed almost 3 million user accounts. Since that time, however, Stellar has built a network of partners that includes Flutterwave and MoneyGram.
XLM’s 2025 Predictions
Readers should first be aware of certain things about market predictions. Different crypto-analysts may choose different sets of parameters to predict the prices of currencies. Therefore, it is self-evident that their analyses and predictions will widely vary. Besides, none can foresee certain political or economic changes such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis or China’s decision to ban crypto-mining. Investors should therefore conduct their own research before deciding to invest in any cryptocurrency.
Nicole Willing is a financial journalist with over a decade of experience. She writes for the Capital and she recently claimed that the price of XLM has now stabilized after stumbling in May due to the collapse of Terra.
In fact, according to Willing, the altcoin could trade at around $0.325 by the end of 2025. Another AI-based forecaster AI Pickup predicted the average price of XLM in 2025 to be $0.14.
A Changelly blog post added that many experts have observed the prices and fluctuations of XLM over the years, concluding that the crypto could go as high as $0.51 and as low as $0.42 in 2025. Its average price will remain around $0.43 in the said year, it added, with potential ROI of the altcoin projected to be 292%.
On the contrary, Finder’s panel of experts are a little more optimistic about where they see XLM going in the next few years. While the average prediction for 2025 centered around XLM being valued at $12.5, there were outlier predictions which places the crypto’s value at $150 by the aforementioned year.
Lumens’ 2030 Predictions
The aforementioned Changelly blog post also predicted that the maximum and minimum prices of XLM in 2030 will be $2.97 and $2.56, respectively.
According to Willing’s predictions, experts are both bullish and bearish in their assessment of the performance of XLM in 2030. Some predict that it could go as high as $1.28 while some predict that it won’t be able to hike over $0.352.
On the contrary, Telegaon writes that 2030 could be a year of change for the cryptocurrency market as many coins’ values might reach their peaks during this period. It is extremely bullish in its forecast that the cryptocurrency might hit a maximum level of $31.02.
Finder’s panel, as expected, was even more optimistic on this front. It projected a maximum value of $200 for XLM by the year 2030, with an average price of $17.66 for the cryptocurrency.
Now, while the aforementioned projections might sound crazy, there may be some logic to it too. Consider this – Many nation-states across the world are actively considering Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Stellar securing a partnership with Ukraine to provide a CBDC infrastructure could be the catalyst it sorely needs. In fact, according to Finder,
“If successful, it may mean the project becomes the go-to infrastructure provider for governments globally.”
Furthermore, according to Dr. Iwa Salami,
“As an increasing number of countries around the world explore CBDCs, concrete examples of successful implementation of these projects by blockchain technology firms is likely to increase the value of their native cryptocurrencies. As such, this may result in an increase in the price of XLM.”
Not everyone’s convinced though, with some like Professor John Hawkins claiming that such updates are unlikely to “save the coin.”
Even so, it’s worth pointing out that most do see some positive impact on XLM’s prices.
Source: Finder
It was in March this year that Stellar stated in its blog that it will launch Project Jump Cannon, an E&D venture to introduce native smart contracts for its blockchain. The same month, it also introduced the Starbridge project that would create bridges between Stellar and other blockchains, enabling interoperability. If Stellar continues to adopt more of such innovations and succeeds in building a larger community, it would significantly increase its price by 2030.
Conclusion
The Stellar team plans to focus on three strategic building blocks in 2022, viz. (i) increasing network scalability and innovation, (ii) activating more network participation, and (iii) promoting diversity and inclusion.
In June 2022, the system upgraded Protocol 19, building payment channels and key recovery channels. Stellar is also working on the Project Jump Cannon to facilitate a robust execution environment for smart contracts.
This year, many crypto-exchanges such as WhiteBIT, CoinMe, and Mercado Bitcoin enabled USD-backed stablecoin transactions, increasing the access to USDC on Stellar.
Stellar has, time and again, stressed on its role in increasing financial inclusion across the globe. In particular, it focuses on working towards better microfinance management. It has partnered with financial institutions like FinClusive to make financial transactions over banking networks easier and seamless. Today, it operates in association with a number of financial institutions across the globe, shaping the future of a financial system that is welcoming to cryptocurrency.
Any financial institution can integrate with Stellar and avoid the hassle of building its own payment gateway. This facility makes the process innovative and specialized. Besides, the associated costs for both the platforms and its customers are incredibly low, making Stellar the preferred choice of many global financial institutions. This integration connects these global players in such a way that interoperability and communication among different systems are seamless.
These developments are certain to boost Stellar’s credibility among the users. Besides, XLM is one of the most eco-friendly cryptocurrencies. Its consensus model is faster than both PoS and PoW, making it the preferred choice of many investors.
We must note that XLM will be scarce in the future as Stellar doesn’t plan to mint more currency. As it becomes increasingly rare, its value is bound to increase. Such a possible scenario could make XLM a potentially lucrative investment asset.