Stellar [XLM], Cardano [ADA], & Ethereum [ETH] Price Update

This week the entire cryptocurrency market hit a year low and closely scraped going under the $250 billion mark.

Source: CoinMarketCap^[1]

Many speculate that the reason for this week’s dip is due to the Bitcoin futures, but the impact the futures have on the greater market remains a mystery to most.

Most coins within the top 100 are in the green today, let’s take a look at a few that are outperforming the rest.

Stellar [XLM] 

It was just announced that the tech giant IBM (NYSE:IBM) have begun getting serious about cryptocurrency and more specifically expanding its partnership with Stellar. The partnership was made public last October, and currently, IBM is running nine Stellar nodes. These nodes are used for cross-border payment trials across the U.S, Australia, Brazil, and China.

Jesse Lund, IBM’s new head of blockchain development, spoke to Coin Desk and said:

“We’re seeing tons of demand for digital asset issuance across the board. What’s happening is there’s this emergence of a new segment that could actually be one of the biggest segments, that is a permissioned but public blockchain network typology.” 

That being said, IBM remains open to working with various blockchain projects rather than just putting all its eggs on the Stellar network.

This announcement by Lund seems to have caused XLM’s price to shoot up. At press time, XLM is trading at $0.213 a coin, up 16.04%. Stellar is leading the top cryptocurrencies for the most price gains on the market today.

Cardano [ADA]

There is no new news on Cardano, except the fact that its next upgrade is just weeks away. If you’ve invested in ADA but haven’t done your research on the project itself and its roadmap. I highly recommend you read my article linked below.

At press time, ADA is trading at $0.156 a coin, up 9.42%, in 24 hours.

>> Cardano vs. EOS – A Closer Look^[2]

Ethereum [ETH]

Just recently, John McAfee, the creator of the McAfee software just went on a rant via Twitter about his support for Ethereum.

Here’s what I find funny: Ethereum is trashed more than any currency, and yet no currency is more necessary and central due to It’s smart contract platform that is used by more than 50% of all new altcoins. It’s like everyone values water, but not the containers it is carried in.

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) March 29, 2018^[3]

The price of the cryptocurrency has dropped to around $400 recently, and a lot of its movement stems from speculation. Still, Ethereum hit above the $1,000 mark in days, and its price lift back above that mark is possible.

While the new generation of cryptocurrencies are steadily on the long-time dApp platform’s tail, you can’t deny that Ethereum’s smart contracts haven’t been used by more than 50%