Stellar and Ripple are two of the biggest payment-focused cryptocurrencies in the world. Ripple’s XRP has a market cap of over $25 billion while Stellar’s XLM is valued at over $2.5 billion. Another similarity between the two is that Stellar’s founder, Jed McCaleb, was one of the co-founders of Ripple. So, which is a better buy between XRP and XLM?
The case for XRP
XRP price has crashed by about 40% this year. While the coin has underperformed the S&P 500 and Dow Jones, it has done better than most cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Stellar, and Ethereum. It has risen by more than 73% from its lowest level this year.
XRP has done better than other cryptocurrencies in the past few months because of the ongoing case by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Last month, the judge overseeing ruled that the SEC should provide documents from Hinman, in which was seen as a victory for Ripple. As such, analysts expect that the company has a higher probability of winning the case.
XRP has also risen because of partnerships amid the ongoing cases. For example, this week, it partnered with companies like I-Remit and LemonWay, a leading payment in France and Sweden.
Therefore, there is a likelihood that the XRP price will continue rising as bulls target the next key resistance level at $0.6595, which is about 32% above the current level.
Stellar faces challenges
Stellar is a blockchain project that makes it possible for people to store and move money. It has a platform that enables people to create digital representations of money like pesos and US dollars. Stellar is mostly used by fintech and other money transfer companies like MoneyGram and Wyre. XLM, its native token, has seen its price crashed by more than 60% this year.
USD Coin is one of the biggest use-case of Stellar. It was used by Circle to build its stabilized USDC, which is one of the most popular stablecoins in the world, with over $45 billion in market cap.
A key challenge for Stellar is that Binance, the biggest exchange in the world, converted its USDC balances to Binance USD. At the same time, plans by Circle to go public in New York stalled.
The bottom line
Stellar Lumens and Ripple are some of the biggest payment cryptocurrencies in the world. While the two coins have a correlation, there is a likelihood that Ripple price will do better than Stellar. Besides, it has a catalyst in the ongoing SEC vs Ripple case.