XRP’s main competitor Stellar Lumens should see increased adoption thanks to a new fund that was created by the digital investment group Greyscale.
Grayscale Investments was established in 2013 by Digital Currency Group and has provided digital currency investing services ever since. The company created Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares, publicly quoted securities solely invested in and deriving value from the price of Bitcoin.
The fund had similar instruments launched for several other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), Horizen (ZEN), Zcash (ZEC) and Ripple’s XRP. And on January 17th they’ve confirmed that a traditional investment vehicle for Stellar’s very own XLM token has been added to the Grayscale platform.
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Newly-established Stellar Lumens Trust should improve the overall reach and adoption of XLM by exposing the asset to Grayscale’s extensive network of investors. Michael Sonnenshein, managing director at Grayscale, explained that a strong demand for an on-platform asset backed by the currently 6th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world led to the creation of this fund. He further expanded by confirming his belief in Stellar’s real world usability:
“I think the theory is a sound one. An American bank may be keeping large amounts of currencies in foreign banks, and to be able to bring those balances of foreign currencies onto a balance sheet as working capital is valuable. Financial institutions won’t be required to hold balances all over the place. This will improve efficiency and shore up balance sheets for other uses.”
This addition shouldn’t go unnoticed by the Ripple/XRP crowd. Ripple and XRP both have a similar product, a blockchain network-backed payment system capable of transferring value across the world in an instant and low-cost manner. XRP has already received its vote of trust from Grayscale, as it too saw an XRP-based trust opened on the platform. With this latest addition of an XLM-based fund, two of the world’s most popular cross-border crypto payment solutions will have another battleground to duke out their differences on.
