XLM Defies Market Sell-off
On June 1, XLM surged past the $0.27 threshold as the cryptocurrency showed signs it has not lost the momentum that saw it hit its year-to-date high on May 30. Market data show XLM rose from just under $0.243 to reach $0.271637 late Sunday before retreating to just under $0.26. XLM hit $0.27 again a few minutes before 3 a.m. EST, briefly pushing its 24-hour gains to 14%.
While a market-wide sell-off trimmed XLM’s daily gains to 5% by 5:10 a.m. EST, the rise left it as one of a handful of high-cap altcoins to log gains during that period. The other gainers were HYPE, which went up 6.5%, and TRX, up 1.1%. They were the only two other Coingecko top 20 digital assets to register gains on a day when the aggregate cryptocurrency market retreated by 1.4%.
Since the announcement of Stellar’s partnership with DTCC, XLM has nearly doubled in value, lifting its market capitalization to $8.5 billion. The digital asset’s price action during a 24-hour window resulted in the liquidation of nearly $4.6 million in short bets and $3.76 million in long bets.
As reported by Bitcoin.com News, the DTCC collaboration will see the top post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry tokenize custodied assets on the Stellar blockchain. The collaboration is seen as a massive coup for Stellar, which until recently appeared to be losing the real-world assets (RWA) tokenization narrative.
In addition to the DTCC collaboration, Cash App’s rollout of USDC payments on Stellar for its 60 million users is seen as expanding the network’s real-world payment utility. Meanwhile, Bermuda’s migration of its national payment services to Stellar is viewed as an important sovereign endorsement of the network.
XLM’s latest surge came just as its perceived rival digital asset, XRP, closed May with a net loss of 6%. In fact, since May 14, when it tested the $1.60 threshold, XRP has declined by nearly 20%, which helped push its year-to-date losses to 29%. While XLM’s recent rally has propelled it into the top 20 digital assets by market capitalization, XRP has seen its gap with BNB widen.
Naturally, this performance gap has renewed discussions regarding which protocol will ultimately capture the cross-border payments market. While some XRP advocates took to social media to urge retail users against reactionary capital rotation into XLM, more tempered observers noted that Stellar’s high-profile DTCC integration does not negate the deep institutional plumbing Ripple has steadily established.
