Bitcoin (BTC) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €172.6 billion. Previous value: €148.2 billion. The average daily trading volume is €21.4 billion. There are approximately 18.4 million coins in circulation.

Within the last 12 months the Bitcoin value ranged between €4413 (March 2020) and €11,604 (June 2019), the ratio between minimum and maximum is thus 1:2.63. The volatility is 77 points (source: Bitgur).

The purest and most secure crypto currency

Bitcoin is the first, oldest and most important coin and also the safest. Bitcoin was invented in 2008 and launched in 2009, in response to the crisis of the global financial system at the time. Bitcoin offers only one single, centralized application – it is an electronic peer-to-peer currency system for online transactions. It is therefore a currency in its purest form.

Bitcoins are mined

Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as “mining”: to be solved here is a computational problem that makes it possible to chain transaction blocks (blockchain). For this achievement, the miners are rewarded with newly created Bitcoins and transaction fees. Bitcoins can be exchanged for other currencies, products or services.

By definition no inflation

The source code for Bitcoin sets the total amount of coins at 21 million, of which approximately 18 million have been mined and are in circulation to date. Since only 3 million Bitcoins can still be mined, this limiting mechanism has a stabilizing effect on the price. It also prevents devaluation through inflation.

Independent of central banks

Bitcoins are freely traded on appropriate exchanges and are considered the gold standard in the crypto world. Since 2020, German banks are also allowed to sell Bitcoins and other crypto currencies. However, unlike banks, Bitcoin does not have a centralized management. Therefore the currency is also beyond government control. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

Bitcoin has held its ground well during the crisis and has now risen again to €8900. This is the same level as last summer. The effects of the crisis have been compensated not least by the so-called “halving” on May 12. This halves the rewards for mining in order to artificially reduce the supply of coins and thus prevent currency inflation. Currently you only get 6.25 Bitcoins for a successful mining action. This makes each Bitcoin more valuable, on which especially large investors (the so-called whales) have bet, expanded their portfolio and pushed the Bitcoin price up again. Bitcoin investors have made a total of 0.6% gains since the end of February, which means that even in times of crisis they have not suffered a loss.

There are many indications that Bitcoin will continue to decouple itself from developments on the stock markets. As the markets are currently being flooded with money to cope with the economic consequences of the Corona crisis, it could establish itself as an alternative currency to the dollar and euro due to its resistance to inflation.

Supplement June 30, 2020

Although short-term forecasts for Bitcoin are rather bearish, Bitcoin’s long-term fundamentals remain optimistic. The monetary policy of the central banks in these times of global crisis is unanimously described by many analyses as the driving force. Bitcoin undoubtedly has a leading role in this regard. With a market dominance of more than 65 percent, it continues to be decisive for the performance of the entire market. Investors are buying Bitcoin as a hedge against rising inflation in euros, dollars or other fiat currencies, and for a few days now there have been rumors from various sources that PayPal is about to fully integrate Bitcoin. If this were true, 340 million customers worldwide would be able to interact with the crypto market. PayPal itself has so far neither confirmed nor denied the rumors.

Supplement August 1, 2020

The pandemic shows in all sectors of the economy that the way out of the crisis cannot be a “business as usual”, but must be linked to consistent digitisation. This insight is apparently also spreading to currencies.

Bitcoin climbed to an annual high in July and broke the psychologically important $10,000 mark, with a massive increase in trading volume. Investors fear a collapse of the dollar due to the weakness of the US economy; therefore, US government bonds are increasingly being swapped for gold and/or even Bitcoin.

These figures nourish the highest expectations of supporters. There are predictions on the net about an unstoppable rally that will push the Bitcoin price to 50,000 dollars within the next 12 months.

But caution is more appropriate in view of the fluctuations in development over the last six months. A consolidation phase is likely to occur initially. Which does not rule out the possibility of further upward outbreaks in the near future.

Ethereum (ETH) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €30.4 billion. The average daily trading volume is €9 billion. The ratio is 29%. There are approximately 112 million coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €311 (June 2019), lowest price: €98 (March 2020). Fluctuation range: 1:3.2. the volatility is 86.70 points (source: Bitgur).

Blockchain as platform

Ethereum has the largest developer community in the crypto universe. Created in 2013, it forms a platform ecosystem with decentralized applications and tokens. While Bitcoin uses the blockchain technology to track who owns and trades Bitcoins, Ethereum uses the blockchain as a platform for developers. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum works with an open access infrastructure, so that programmers can create new applications, such as in the financial sector, on this platform at any time. In addition, there is currently no supply cap. Theoretically, any number of coins can be generated; this makes the ecosystem intentionally deflationary and volatile, in order to invite users to invest through a currency that is continuously declining in value, better today than tomorrow.

The largest Smart Contracts platform

The ETH coin is less a digital currency than a kind of fuel that keeps the network running. ETH is not mined, but “earned”. The special feature of Ethereum are the so-called “Smart Contracts” – apps that control themselves, as it were, in terms of the actors involved and the fulfilment of the contract details. This is essentially what the Ethereum token is used for. Developers who create apps use it to pay for the resources to host the application; users use it to pay for the use of these apps.

The App Store of the network currently contains most of the decentralized applications (DApps). These include file-sharing or financial derivatives, peer-to-peer gaming or time management systems, proof of identity or reputation systems. Ethereum is also used as a platform for the introduction of other crypto currencies.

Exciting further developments are pending

In addition, the developers behind Ethereum are working on releasing version 2.0, which is expected to be released in July 2020. It will provide the DApps with more features and improvements and make the Ethereum network much more scalable.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

Ethereum’s share price has shown strong momentum in recent months, but is now heading back towards the important €200 mark. Like other Altcoins, ETH has thus held its ground well in the crisis. The upswing could continue, as most decentralized financial products (DeFis) run on the Ethereum blockchain and these alternative offers become more attractive in times of zero or negative interest rates. The fact that long positions in ETH have reached an all-time high since April at Bitfinex (one of the largest trading platforms for crypto currencies) also speaks for the upswing. The ETH long positions, which now exceed 1.6 million, represent around 1.5% of the total ETH in circulation.

Although the release of Ethereum 2.0 has been postponed to the 3rd quarter of 2020 due to the crisis, the associated innovations should above all solve the scaling problems of the platform and thus have the potential to trigger an upward price jump.

Supplement June 30, 2020

According to data provider DeFi Pulse, the number of ethers included in DeFi applications rose from 2.539 million on 16 June to 3.087 million on 29 June. This is a growth of more than 20% in 13 days.

There are many indications that Ethereum will be able to continue its outperformance of Bitcoin. Especially when the market recovers, Ethereum will rise with a significant leverage, and a test version of the long-awaited version 2.0 was finally launched a few days ago.

Supplement August 1, 2020

Ethereum’s course has exploded. In the last 4 weeks it has risen by a good 40%, in the last 8 weeks by 66% and since the beginning of the year by almost 150%. This massive rally is mainly driven by the increasing dynamics in the entire crypto market, but the strong fundamentals of the ETH network have also played a key role.

According to the analysis and ranking portal DeFi Pulse, the value of money deposited in DeFi applications has grown to almost 4 billion dollars. As recently as April, the value was under $1 billion, only to rise by 320% in the last 3 months.

In addition, according to the analysis company Skew, the total value of unsettled contracts on Ethereum futures – i.e. “bets” on future price developments – has reached a new all-time high and exceeded the 1 billion dollar mark.

Futures contracts are the domain of highly professional traders. They seem to have confidence in the upcoming version 2.0 of the network and in the long-term potential of the decentralized protocol. A final test network for version 2.0 is scheduled to go live in mid-August.

XRP (XRP) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €9.4 billion. The average daily trading volume amounts to €1.6 billion. There are approximately 45 billion coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €0.44 (June 2019), lowest price: €0.13 (March 2020). Fluctuation range: 1:3.4. The volatility is 76.12 points (source: Bitgur).

The blockchain for banks

Ripple (XRP) is a crypto currency that was developed explicitly for companies and financial institutions. At its core, Ripple is a payment network for banks with the aim of making international payment transactions, especially between different currency areas, more efficient and cost-effective. Thus Ripple is an alternative to SWIFT, the current communication and payment network of the banking world.

Centralized but secure

However, the crypto currency Ripple, which has been in use since 2012, was not issued locally, but is largely held by the developers themselves. The total amount of coins is fixed at 100 billion tokens, of which about 55% are currently reserved for the developers and stored in a cryptographically secured escrow account. This escrow account ensures that the developers do not have continuous access to their entire reserved 55 billion XRP, but only to 1 billion coins per month. This explains why the trading volume for Ripple is relatively low.

Ripple currently has more than 300 (pilot) customers, including Western Union, American Express, MoneyGram and Santander.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

Ripple has suffered the most from the crisis of all the major coins. The price has not yet made a decisive recovery. On the other hand, the crisis is increasing the chances that digital payment systems will continue to prevail. Ripple’s development will therefore depend crucially on its ability to convince other banks and financial institutions to adopt Ripple’s products and the native XRP currency.

Two Swiss banks have decided to do so in recent days. Sygnum Bank has announced that it will support XRP in terms of deposit, exchange and lending services. Arab Bank will also provide services and consulting for XRP.

Supplement June 30, 2020

Ripple has benefited from the Corona pandemic due to the growth in global remittances. Companies with physical financial operations have seen a 40% decline, while Ripple has seen an 80% to 100% increase. It is precisely during the crisis that the advantages of XRP for fast and secure transfers are becoming apparent, especially when compared to the traditional financial system. In addition, Ripple exceeded its forecast of 20 new contracts with new partners with a total of 28 new contracts signed. Not surprisingly, CNBC lists Ripple at number 28 in its current list of the 50 most disruptive and thus most promising start-ups in the world.

Supplement August 1, 2020

Ripple was able to record respectable price gains and largely offset the losses incurred since March. This is probably due not only to general market activity, but also to the good figures of banking giant Santander, which announced that its Ripple-based transfer app now handles more than half a billion dollars worth of cross-border payments – half of the bank’s annual international transfers. Ripple is proving its worth as a medium for international payments.

In a recent announcement, Ripple also announced the development of a peer-to-peer payment platform called Payburner, which will bring online shoppers and merchants directly together.

Together with financial giant and long-time Ripple partner SBI Holdings, the company also plans to launch a new platform called S Coin that can be used by governments and corporations worldwide to issue digital tokens.

Binance Coin (BNB) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €2.4 billion. The average daily trading volume is €167 million, resulting in a ratio of 6.9%. There are approximately 144 million coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €38.9 (June 2019), lowest price: €8.16 (March 2020) Fluctuation range: 1:4.8. Volatility is 90.38 points (source: Bitgur).

Save transaction fees with Binance Coin

Binance, a Chinese stock exchange, is the most popular platform for trading crypto currencies worldwide. In 2018, it recorded an estimated profit of $400 million. In July 2017, it introduced the Token Binance Coin, which has been trading on its own blockchain since April 2019.

The Binance Coin serves primarily as a means of payment for transaction fees on the stock exchange. The advantage is that the fee is not deducted from traded crypto currencies. Binance also offers a gradual discount on transaction fees. This is intended to make the use of the coin more lucrative. In addition, the Binance Coin can also be used outside of the platform. It can be used as a means of payment, for example via the Monaco Blockchain, which allows customers to buy crypto currencies via Visa.

Steadily decreasing supply

Binance secures the value of the token through a consistent burning strategy. Originally, 200 million tokens were generated, which are gradually “burned”, i.e. removed from circulation. The aim is to reduce the total quantity to 100 million, so that ideally the demand for the token exceeds the supply, thus increasing the value.

Binance has also survived a hack in which 7000 Bitcoins worth $40 million were stolen. All those affected have been fully compensated through a security fund.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

The Corona crisis has increased the turnover of the world’s leading crypto exchange Binance. The trading volume is growing, as the trading interest of many investors has obviously increased. Binance has also taken over CoinMarketCap, the most popular ranking platform – although this does not meet with unanimous approval, as there are fears of manipulation in favour of Binance. What is necessary here is the disclosure of the calculation methods for the ranking.

The positive trend for Binance is also reflected in the burn programme for NBB. By the first quarter of 2020 a good 10% of all NBBs have now been burned. In addition, Binance is launching its own mining pool with an initial reward system for participants and has announced that it will integrate smart contracts into its own coin system.

Supplement June 30, 2020

The Binance course has fallen. But the coin is expected to rise once the market is in a bullish dynamic. The fact that Binance, as a trading platform, carried out one of its biggest upgrades ever on 28 June should help. The underlying programming code has been completely rewritten and the trading matching engine has even been switched to a completely different programming language. This should make the platform 10 times faster and has created optimal conditions to be prepared for the next upward trend in the crypto markets.

Supplement August 1, 2020

The Binance share price has recovered moderately and has also been able to recover some of its losses. The company is extremely optimistic and, especially in Europe, aggressive.

Binance has taken over Swipe.io, making it one of the rare providers of VISA credit cards that also integrate established crypto currencies as credit. In the coming weeks, the new Binance Card is to be launched in Europe, which will open up new payment options both offline and online worldwide and thus anchor crypto currencies in everyday life.

Binance has also entered into a strategic alliance with the Munich-based financial institution CM-Equity AG in order to be able to offer its services in Germany and Europe. In parallel, Binance has launched a trading platform in Australia. CM Equity is a 100% licensed and BaFin supervised financial institution (yes, the reputation of BaFin is not the best at the moment), so that crypto investors can now enter the market relatively easily.

ChainLink (LINK) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €2.1 billion. The average daily trading volume is €447 million. There are approximately 350 million coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €6.89 (July 2020), lowest price: €0.40 (April 2019). Fluctuation range: 1:11.7. The volatility is 107.45 points (source: Bitgur).

Blockchain thought ahead

ChainLink, founded in September 2014, is one of the most successful crypto projects of 2019, based on the Ethereum blockchain and is the first project that tries to solve a central problem of blockchains: they cannot access data outside their network. Chainlink closes this barrier between the blockchain and the real world by building a secure and decentralized Oracle network.

New, unlimited applications

An Oracle is a kind of agent that verifies real-world events by means of impartial persons or institutions whose reliability has been agreed upon and transmits this information to the blockchain. This makes it possible to design intelligent contracts that, for example, only execute a transaction if certain external conditions are met, such as a fixed exchange rate is reached or a sensor reports certain values.

Impressive partners

One of the most important partnerships of the project is the cooperation with SWIFT, the banking network of over 11,000 financial institutions worldwide. In addition, Google integrated Chainlink’s smart contract solutions into its cloud in mid-2019 to map cloud-generated data to a blockchain. In March 2020, a partnership was also signed with Socios, a marketer of sports and entertainment events.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

According to OnChain FX, ChainLink is the best-performing digital asset among the Top 10 Coins in terms of market capitalization. It has more than tripled its value in the last 12 months. New data suggests that many of the project’s supporters hold the LINK token as a long-term investment and send their tokens to either their own wallets or Chainlink Smart Contracts. The proportion of LINK tokens held by the top 1% of addresses increased by almost 25% last year, according to Glassnode.

The rapid recovery after the corona-induced market crash shows that investors have confidence in a further positive development. The interoperability of Chainlink with classic Fiat cash systems is a key success factor here. The central growth driver here is the strong anchoring in the decentralized financial sector. Almost every DApp uses the decentralised price feeds from LINK.

Supplement June 30, 2020

Chainlink approached an all-time high in June, confirming the assessment that this is one of the most exciting projects in the crypto world, offering real long-term added value. This strong performance is probably due to Ethereum’s strong share price performance and the recent partnership with China’s national Blockchain Service Network (BNS) to provide BNS systems with access to off-chain data, which led the World Economic Forum (WEF) to include Chainlink in its list of the 100 most promising technology pioneers in June.

Supplement August 1, 2020

ChainLink reached an all-time high in July, one of the big winners of the Corona crisis. This puts ChainLink in the top 10 by market capitalization. All in all, the token has managed to bring its investors profits of 600% in the last 6 months.

Reasons for the rapid price increase of the token can be found mainly in the increasing popularity of DeFi applications. Even though Chainlink has nothing directly to do with decentralised financial applications, many exchanges and apps use Chainlink’s price feeds as a basis for reliable prices. Almost daily the ChainLink team reports new integrations here.

Further reasons can be found in well-known cooperations. The National Blockchain Service Network (BSN) China uses Chainlink and its oracles to provide companies with easy access to off-chain data. Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems has recently become a Chainlink node operator and thus a provider of decentralized data feeds that are to be paid for in crypto currency. The blockchain-based platform GamerHash, which buys unused PC resources from gamers for mining, wants to integrate data feeds from Chainlink for fair pricing. There is also a potential partnership between ChainLink and Cardano, a non-profit blockchain platform for the execution of smart contracts.

Monero (XMR) is a digital currency with a market capitalisation of €1.2 billion. The average daily trading volume is €71.5 million. There are approximately 17.6 million coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €106 (June 2019), lowest price: €33 (March 2020). Fluctuation range: 1:3.2. The volatility is 99.32 points (source: Bitgur).

Consistent anonymity and decentralisation

Monero (XMR) is a decentralized, blockchain-based crypto currency, comparable to Bitcoin. However, Monero places greater emphasis on anonymity and decentralization. It uses ring signatures and stealth addresses so that the origin, amounts and destinations of all transactions are disguised. They cannot be linked to a specific user or real identity.

Democratic mining approach

Monero also pursues a different approach to mining. Unlike Bitcoin, highly specialized, performance-hungry systems are not required for mining, but rather conventional computers can be used thanks to efficient algorithms. The advantage desired by the developers is the equal treatment of the user community and the avoidance of oligopoly formation. Large amounts of currency should not be concentrated in the hands of a few, as is the case with Bitcoin.

Amounts released from Monero’s mining operations are continuously reduced until a total of 18 million XMR has been mined. This is expected to occur in 2022. From that time on, the amount to be distributed per mining operation will be fixed at 0.6 XMR. However, this does not fix a final total amount of XMR. In the long term, the total volume of Monero will therefore exceed that of crypto currencies with a final contribution target (such as Bitcoin).

Even the respected Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd prefers Monero over other crypto currencies.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

XMR’s share price has not offered a spectacular performance in recent weeks and months, but has remained relatively stable overall. However, there are repeated fears that stock exchanges could remove Monero from their offering as a result of the new anti-money laundering laws, as the coin can be used for criminal transactions due to its meanwhile further developed anonymity functions (including the shielding of users’ IP addresses even without VPN or Tor).

This makes the coin a favorite among hackers. A few days ago, for example, it became known that an illegal monero-mining operation had been carried out on several high-performance computers in the European Union used for research into the corona virus.

Supplement June 30, 2020

The Monero share price has recovered from the slump in March and shows only minimal fluctuations. The privacy protocols used here are still considered exemplary, also and especially with regard to other coins, and, as they are easily adaptable, they are decisive for the entire ecosystem of crypto currencies.

On the other hand, the popularity of the currency among hackers is unbroken. Images are smuggled into docker containers that mine for Monero. Microsoft also warns that hackers using Kubeflow, a machine learning toolkit, are hijacking cloud computing resources in Azure for Monero mining.

Supplement August 1, 2020

Monero is showing a slight recovery and is profiting from the general upturn in the crypto market without being able to set its own impulses. However, the chain of problems surrounding the privacy coin is not breaking:

• The Argentinean Telekom has become victim of a ransomware attack in July. The claim: 7.5 million US dollars, to be paid in Monero.
• Monero will also not be listed on Coinbase. The company announced that the resistance of the regulatory authorities was too great.
• In addition, a new botnet was uncovered by Cisco, which specialized in mining Monero on infected computers.
• And last but not least, with Zcash, Monero has grown into a serious competitor in the field of Privacy Coins, which is becoming more and more popular.

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is a digital currency with a current market capitalisation of €317.4 million. The average daily trading volume is €128.7 million.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €0.40 (March 2019), lowest price: €0.10 (March 2020). Fluctuation margin: 1:4. Volatility is 60.93 points (source: Bitgur)

Revolution of the digital advertising world

BAT is not a special crypto currency, but a so-called utility token, which primarily serves as a billing unit between content creators, advertisers and customers on new, blockchain-based ad and service platforms. The project was launched in 2017 by Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla Firefox, and aims to revolutionize the digital advertising world. To this end, a dedicated web browser was created, the open source Brave browser, which has already recorded around 40 million downloads for the Android version alone.

Brave prevents among other things the tracking of the surfing behavior, the setting of cookies and automatically hides advertisements. Users can, however, allow targeted ads and receive BAT tokens as a reward, with which they can support certain content creators and gain access to exclusive content in the future. Conversely, advertisers within this ecosystem use the BAT token to buy ad space on websites. The advantage: because all transactions are recorded in the blockchain, all permitted interactions between companies, advertisers and users can be checked and tracked, unlike the key figures provided by Google or Facebook.

Large number of users, great potential

Brave’s monthly user numbers rose from 8.7 million in October 2019 to 10.4 million at the end of November, a 19% increase across all platforms. On an annual basis, the monthly number of users has doubled. The number of daily active users even tripled in the last 12 months to 3.3 million

The total number of BAT tokens is limited to 1,5 billion, all of which were issued. As more and more advertisers or agencies demand the tokens, the price per token will increase. And: since the token monetarizes people’s attention, it can also be used for other things, not only for the Brave Browser, but also for the user experience in online shops, for example.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

As a result of the quarantines imposed during the Corona crisis, Internet usage increased and has apparently encouraged users to look for browser alternatives. Brave has also benefited from this. In the last month alone, it registered over 1 million new users. At the end of April there were 13.8 million users in total, 1.7 million of whom also opted for the crypto reward system.

The reason for the growth (besides the tokens you can earn with the browser) might be the high level of data control and privacy protection that Brave assures users. The latest Brave offer (initially only available for the US market) also aims in this direction: encrypted video telephony. With this, one attacks above all Zoom, which is repeatedly criticized for its lack of IT security.

In addition, Brave, in cooperation with Binance, has integrated a widget that provides instant access to users’ Binance accounts, allowing quick and easy crypto trading from within the browser itself, while fully respecting privacy.

Supplement June 30, 2020

The Brave platform has now registered around 620,000 publishers thanks to increased Internet usage, collecting BAT funds from Brave users on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Reddit, Vimeo, Github, SoundCloud and other websites. More than 50% of all registered publishers come from Youtube, followed by Twitter with 12% and Reddit with 9%.

In recent days, several whales have also accumulated BATs on a large scale, almost 6% of the total token offering. This has dramatically increased the value of the token since June 20th.

The fact that Paybito, the leading crypto exchange and trading platform in the USA, has recently added the Basic Attention Token to its portfolio speaks for the growing importance of the coin.

Supplement August 1, 2020

The BAT token almost completely compensated for the losses incurred during the crisis. New partnerships are supporting the upturn:

• The Japanese exchanges GMO Coin and BitFlyer now offer trading with BAT Tokens. Coincheck has joined.
• Brave has also entered into a partnership with NYIAX, the blockchain-based digital advertising marketplace. Interested advertising partners can now reserve contingents for ads in Brave here.

According to recent research by the analysis company Flipside Crypto, the BAT token is now the most commonly used ERC-20 token in the DeFi sector. The transaction volume for the period from June 19 to July 2 was $931 million, more than the total volume of Ether and Dai.

Stellar (XLM) is a digital currency with a market capitalization of €1.2 billion. The average daily trading volume is $245.6 million, resulting in a ratio of 21%. There are approximately 20 billion coins in circulation.

Highest price in the last 12 months: €0.12 (May 2019), lowest price: €0.03 (March 2020). Fluctuation margin: 1:4, volatility is 64.93 points (source: Bitgur).

Open source alternative to Ripple

Stellar, founded in 2015, is a decentralized open source network for cross-border currency transactions and payments. All types of currencies – whether real money like dollars or crypto money like Bitcoin – can be traded and sent via this network. For real money, a digital representation, a token, is generated that is secured by an equivalent deposit. These tokens can now be treated like traditional money because they can be exchanged back into traditional money at any time.

The network is designed so that all financial systems worldwide can work with it. It processes millions of transactions daily. This makes Stellar a de facto competitor to Ripple. To keep the network synchronous, Stellar also uses a blockchain, but thanks to a special implementation, Stellar is faster, cheaper and more energy efficient than other blockchain-based systems.

The Stellar Network has a native digital currency, Lumen, which must be purchased for a small amount to initialize accounts and transactions. Beyond these requirements, Stellar does not privilege any particular currency.

Successful adaptation, many customers

In January 2018, the number of registered accounts was around 250,000, and by the end of 2019 it had already exceeded 4 million, meaning that the number of customers has increased more than 15-fold within 2 years, and the trend is still rising. Customers include not only cost-conscious private individuals and smaller companies, but also large corporations such as IBM and Franklin Templeton, which use the network to process parts of their global payment transactions.

---

Supplement May 31, 2020:

Like other crypto-currencies, Stellar has held up well during the crisis. The losses in March have now been made good, and the price has risen by 75% since the beginning of the year and is now at the same level as last autumn. Stellar has thus even outperformed Bitcoin.

In addition, the Stellar Development Foundation has just announced that it will increase its commitment to SatishiPay, one of the largest providers of micropayment systems, by $550,000 to support the upcoming B2B payment solution.

The Stellar Lumens Foundation will also donate 2.5 million XLM to support charities such as UNICEF and the Tor project to help stem the corona crisis.

Supplement June 30, 2020

The price of Stellar, last month’s special recommendation, suffered heavily in June after the May high and is not yet showing any signs of recovery. The concept behind Stellar is undisputed, but there was simply a lack of optimistic news that could have fuelled a price breakout. Thus, Stellar remains below the expectations from May.