ambcrypto.com
As the Libra bears eased off the cryptocurrency market, an unlikely leader emerged. Stellar Lumens [XLM], the second of the two most prominent bank coins in the market, surged by over 10 percent over the hour, as the market recorded a positive correction.
Following the second of two hearings for Calibra’s David Marcus, Bitcoin dropped from $11,500 to under $9,500, while the altcoins experienced a bleed-over effect. The market was drowning in a sea of red, declining by over 15 percent on a 24-hour basis, while the collective market cap dropped to under $250 billion for the first time in over a month.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Stellar Lumens, despite not having the best year, rose by over 15% over the last 24 hours and 10% over an hour. Further, on the back of this massive surge, XLM stormed into the top 10 by ousting Tron [TRX].
Two prominent reasons were behind Stellar Lumens’ bump in price. The first was Poloniex, the American cryptocurrency exchange, announcing that over 1.2 million XLM had been “distributed” to the exchange’s customers owing to Stellar inflation rewards.
Poloniex tweeted,
Over 1.2M Stellar Lumens have now been distributed to Poloniex customers via Stellar inflation rewards!
Learn more about @StellarOrg inflation on Poloniex here: https://t.co/sJYH7cQQFU pic.twitter.com/gac6LBi87Y
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) July 16, 2019
The other source of the Stellar Lumens pump came from its banking partner in crime, IBM. The American IT company’s blockchain project, ‘World Wire,’ which operates on the Stellar protocol, has been an important catalyst to the XLM surge. And in this instance, an IBM blessing resulted in a Stellar Lumens pump.
According to CNBC, IBM recorded “better-than-expected” second-quarter earnings on July 17. This resulted in the shares of the IT company surging by over 4 percent, followed by an immediate correction. 2019 has been fruitful for the company for a multitude of reasons, with its share price up by a whopping 26 percent since the year began.
Source: Trading View
Post dropping down to $0.075 on July 17 while the lawmakers spelled hell for Libra and the cryptocurrency market, XLM began to rise. The coin initially rose to $0.083, followed by a massive pump which began at 0930 UTC on 18 July, leading to Stellar Lumens rising from $0.080 to $0.091. Despite a correction wave dropping the coin to $0.088, the price charts are in the green.
LATOKEN remains the largest XLM-traded exchange, with 14.55 percent of the trade volume in the XLM/USDT trading pair. Other top exchanges included Bit-Z, BW.com and Fatbtc.