XRP vs. Stellar (XLM) vs. Cardano (ADA): Which Altcoin Reigns Supreme?

[syedrasool2011]

XRP, Stellar (XLM) and Cardano (ADA) are three altcoins that have unique growth potential on the crypto market.

Ripple, which owns more than half of the total supply of XRP and uses the crypto asset for remittances, has a rich history in e-payments dating back to the days of Ripplepay.com, as an early competitor to PayPal.

In 2011, crypto-mogul Jed McCaleb (more on him later) joined Ripple, and XRP was launched two years after. Ripple’s network is centralized and non-distributed, and, technically, not a true blockchain. While it has some skeptics in the community, Ripple also has vast support from top financial institutions (e.g., AMEX, Santander) through RippleNet.

Stellar Lumens (XLM), meanwhile, was created by McCaleb in 2014 after jumping ship from Ripple. The open-sourced coin is more community-oriented and focused on targeting the unbanked, making it different from FI-friendly Ripple. Stellar boasts its speed, claiming it can handle over 1,000 transactions per second.

Finally, Cardano (ADA) is viewed as a third-generation crypto after its 2015 launch. Built by a global team of leading academics and engineers, Cardano’s goal is to learn from past cryptocurrency mistakes with a big commitment to scientific philosophy and research.

Total ETH Options Open Interest. Source: Skew.com

Typically, when a cryptocurrency sees a major price movement, the open interest drops. This is because large moves often lead to short and long squeezes on the asset which are then followed by a period of consolidation.

For Ether, however, the open interest has climbed to over $1.5 billion, according to data from Skew. Huobi and OKEx alone have $761 million worth of ETH futures contracts currently open.

What’s next after a two-year high
Buoyed by various factors, including DeFi, institutional adoption, and an overall improvement in market sentiment, Ether has surged 235% year-to-date. The Cryptowatch team said:

“Ethereum breaks up to a new 2-year high of $444. ETH is up 87% in the last 25-days, nearly 400% since its March low and 235% year-to-date.”

In the medium-term, traders expect the altcoin to test higher resistance levels, especially if the Ethereum blockchain continues to see high user activity with sentiment driven by ETH 2.0.