Stellar Price Leaps 70 Percent After Kik Announces Move to XLM Blockchain
The stellar price leaped by more than 70 percent after Kik Messenger announced that it would move its Kin token to the stellar blockchain.
Kik to Move Kin Token to Stellar
As CCN.com reported, Kik Messenger raised nearly $100 million through one of the year’s most high-profile initial coin offerings (ICOs). The company, whose popular messaging application has more than 300 million registered users, intends to use its Kin token to create a “digital sharing economy ” that rewards users for adding value to the digital ecosystem.
Kik had originally launched Kin as an ERC20 token that ran on top of the ethereum blockchain. However, last Wednesday, Kik Messenger CEO Ted Livingston revealed during a live Q&A that the company plans to move Kin to the stellar blockchain during the second quarter of next year.
Citing CryptoKitties-caused congestion as an example, Livingston explained that ethereum — which he called the “dial-up era of blockchain” — had proved to be unreliable and complicated to work with. But while ethereum tries to be “everything to everybody, making it “general purpose and slow,” Livingston said that stellar’s blockchain is custom-built for an application like Kin and should be able to scale to meet the company’s needs.
Stellar Price Shoots up by 70 Percent
The stellar price had already been in a sustained uptrend following the announcements of a partnership with IBM and the cryptocurrency’s first major foray into the Korean market, and the news that Kik was moving its token to the XLM blockchain caused the rally’s pace to quicken
Prior to the announcement, the stellar price was trading near $0.15. Since then, it has shot up by more than 70 percent. At one point, the stellar price cracked the $0.30 level — marking a new all-time high — but it has since ebbed to approximately $0.27, according to the CCN.com price index. Stellar now has a market cap of $4.8 billion, making it the 12th-largest cryptocurrency.
