Stellar Lumens Cryptocurrency Approved for Trading in New York for the First Time

It’s early Christmas for Stellar Lumens, a cryptocurrency created by founders of Ripple. Stellar Lumens got the approval from New York financial regulators to be traded on itBit exchange. Along with Stellar Lumens, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin also got the approval from New York’s Department of Financial Services. Previously only Bitcoin was having the approval, but Bitcoin has competition at this trading space too.

Furthermore, the cryptocurrency was also granted banking law charter from NYDFS three years ago. It was the first in the industry to get this authorization. This authorization is similar to BitLicense, which authorizes companies to offer to trade in cryptocurrencies in New York.

Apart from Stellar Lumens, NYDFS also granted the authorization to Xapo, which is a Bitcoin storage company. Xapo is only the sixth BitLicense authorization holder since the inception of the authorization three years ago.

Stellar, which is 7th most valuable cryptocurrency at the time of writing this post. The value of the cryptocurrency is expected to rise as this move is going to welcome Stellar to many exchanges. If you don’t already know, Lumens is a cryptocurrency created by Stellar by Jed McCaleb, who also started Ripple and now bankrupt, Mt Gox.

A payment company, Stripe backs the funding for Stellar blockchain. Furthermore, the blockchain technology is being used by messaging startup KIK and IBM, which uses Stellar to send payments across south pacific countries.

Amidst all this, the price of the cryptocurrency rose by 5% foreseen by investors as a wider market reach and hence a better price. Furthermore, Stellar was in demand by ItBit’s customers. “We haven’t yet applied to trade any other virtual currencies, but plans to add more in the future, including possibly the cryptocurrency created by Ripple, XRP” Cascarilla said.

Post this announcment, ItBit got $65 million for funding from its parent company, paxos. This makes ItBit №2 in USD-BTC trading, next to the leader Coinbase. That being said, Coinbase that has been offering Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin only, has annouced that it will be offering Ethereum classic along with these four cryptocurrencies. Just this announcment has increased the price of Ethereum Classic by 20%.

Exchanges operating in New York, including Coinbase and Circle, are focusing on individual retail investors. On the other hand, ItBit is planning to focus on hedge funds, private equity firms and wealthy individuals. The company aims to play a role of Custodian that can securely store large sums cryptocurrency assets.

“The interest and the adoption from institutions and large firms that have a lot of credibility is very real,” he said. “That might not be reflected in the price today, but from what I see, will certainly be changing the landscape over the next six to 12 months.”

---

Originally published at http://bitfolio.org/cryptocurrency-stellar-lumens-buy-itbit.

Author: Shubham Davey