Stellar Becomes 5th-Most Valued Cryptocurrency By Market Cap

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Blockchain-based distributed open source network Stellar Lumens' native token lumens (XLM) scaled up to enter the list of top five cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. On Sunday, the token's market cap rose from $4.81 billion to over $5 billion, rising almost 4 percent. Previously standing at the fifth rank was EOS token with the market cap at $5.11 billion, which has since fallen to $4.8 billion.

This sudden rise in XLM market cap could be attributed to the recent announcements circling its listings on Blockchain (a cryptocurrency wallet provider) and Coinbase (cryptocurrency exchange platform).

Coinbase had announced in July plans to list five tokens — cardano, basic attention token (BAT), stellar lumens, zcash, and ox — of which only two tokens were listed so far, BAT and ox. BAT was listed Thursday, while ox had been listed in October. The listing of BAT gave rise to speculation that XLM could be listed next. The price of XLM also went up by 5 percent ($0.250841 to $0.264205) Friday, as tracked by CoinMarketCap.

Blockchain said last week it would be giving away $125 million worth of cryptocurrency — the largest ever cryptocurrency “airdrop.” It started Nov. 6 and would continue for six months. The wallet provider said it was giving away XLM tokens to its 30 million customers as part of adding the token to its listings. The 24-hour trading volume was $53 million Saturday, which increased to $109 million Sunday.

Airdrop is a process where a cryptocurrency business distributes cryptocurrency tokens to the wallets of some users free of charge.

This rise in lumens' position could also be attached to the recent news about a fake EOS wallet on Google Play store. This was after a group of EOS developers in Brazil, called EOS RIO, warned several of their users Thursday that someone was trying to spread a fake version of the digital currency wallet app on the Google Play store.

The fake app claimed to have been developed by EOS RIO. The Brazilian team issued a statement to verify that their official app was yet to be listed on the Google Play store. It was not known how many times the fake app was downloaded but it has since been removed from the Play Store.

The move to a top 5 ranking for Stellar can be attributed not only to a surge in price over the last month from a low of $0.21 to $0.27 (a move of more than 28 percent) but also as a result of the overall continued downtrend of former number 5 EOS," David Thomas, cofounder of London-based cryptocurrency broker GlobalBlock, said. "The recent price action for Stellar comes after the listing of Basic Attention Token on behemoth Coinbase’s platform, and the anticipation that further cryptocurrency integration is building with a potential listing soon for Stellar. It is worth noting, however, that the hype of a potential listing does not always guarantee a continuation of the price, as BAT demonstrated last week with a 32 percent drop in price after the official listing. (Stellar) may be number 5 for now but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will retain that spot for a long period of time."