Stellar price leaped by 20 percent after payment processor Stripe teased that it may add support for XLM in the future.
The cryptocurrency markets made a bullish pivot this morning, and Stellar is leading the charge.
After spending most of January on a gradual decline, the Stellar price leaped by 20 percent on Wednesday, ripping past $0.50 to reach a present value of $0.54 on Bittrex.
Stellar now has a $9.9 billion market cap, which makes it the seventh-largest cryptocurrency and places it just $25 million behind sixth-ranked litecoin.
More than half of all XLM trading volume is concentrated on South Korean exchange Upbit, where it is traded against the won, while XLM/BTC pairs from Binance, Bittrex, and Poloniex make up most of the difference.
Several clear factors are fueling Stellar’s latest bull run.
Most significantly, payment processor Stripe teased that it may add Stellar as a payment option in the future. Earlier this week, the company announced that it was winding down support for bitcoin due to its declining utility as a payment medium but said it would “look for opportunities” to bring back cryptocurrency payments.
“We may add support for Stellar (to which we provided seed funding) if substantive use continues to grow,” Stripe’s Tom Karlo said, adding that the company was also interested in the Lightning Network, OmiseGO, and various other projects.
This development followed CCN.com’s earlier report that Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian Sr. tweeted out apparent support for Stellar and said the project’s subreddit is “definitely worth subscribing to.”
The rally also precedes the reported Jan. 25 release of Stellar’s updated roadmap, which may or may not be adding legs to XLM’s climb.
Finally, Stellar often posts huge gains on days when ripple’s XRP token is outperforming the market index, and this was the case again today, as the ripple price’s 10 percent increase is one of the day’s better performances.
Featured image from Shutterstock.