Stellar price and where to buy XLM

What is Stellar?

Stellar is an open-source payment network for moving money across borders and issuing digital versions of currencies, including stablecoins. XLM, also called lumens, is its native asset: it pays the network’s very small transaction fees and is required as a minimum balance on every account.

Stellar does not use mining. Validators reach agreement through the Stellar Consensus Protocol, and a new ledger closes about every 5 seconds. The supply is 50 billion XLM, after a one-time burn removed more than half of the original amount.

How to buy Stellar, step by step

1. Pick an exchange. Every exchange we track lists XLM. Compare fees, funding options and whether it serves your country in our exchange reviews.
2. Create and verify your account. Regulated exchanges ask for identity documents before you can deposit fiat.
3. Fund the account. A bank transfer or a stablecoin deposit usually costs far less than a card payment.
4. Buy XLM. Use the XLM/USDT or XLM/USD market, and check the cheapest venue in the table above first.
5. Decide where to keep it. On the exchange is simplest, but the exchange then holds your coins. A Stellar wallet you control needs a small minimum balance in XLM, and when you send XLM to an exchange you must include its memo. A missing memo is the most common reason Stellar deposits go missing.

Where to buy Stellar at the best price

Every exchange we track lists XLM, and the cheapest one right now is marked in the table above. On XLM the gap between venues is wider than on most large coins, so the table is worth checking before a larger purchase.

• The price on that venue. Each row shows the gap to our composite.
• The trading fee. Our fee comparison lists spot fees side by side.
• How you fund the account. A bank transfer or stablecoin deposit is usually far cheaper than a card payment.

Why the Stellar price differs between exchanges

In our minute-by-minute measurement the gap between the highest and lowest venue averaged about 0.088 percent, against about 0.025 percent for Bitcoin, and it went above half a percent in almost one minute in a hundred.

XLM’s dollar-quoted spot volume is small next to Bitcoin’s or XRP’s, and over half of it trades on a single venue. With thinner books elsewhere, the venues drift further apart. The spread figure at the top of this page is the live measurement; our guide on why crypto prices differ between exchanges explains the mechanism.

What moves the Stellar price

The wider crypto market first. In our hourly composite, XLM moved with Bitcoin at a correlation of about 0.69, where 1 would mean identical moves, and its moves were more than twice the size of Bitcoin’s.

Stellar-specific drivers, such as payment partnerships and stablecoin activity on the network, come on top, together with leverage. The funding rates on this page show whether traders are paying to be long or short right now.

Pros and cons of Stellar

Pros

• Ledgers close about every 5 seconds for a tiny fee.
• A fixed supply of 50 billion XLM after a one-time burn.
• No mining: validators reach agreement through the Stellar Consensus Protocol.

Cons

• Its hourly moves were more than twice Bitcoin’s in our data.
• One of the widest price gaps between exchanges among the large coins we track.
• It trades far below its all-time high of about $0.88.

Stellar’s highest price

Stellar’s all-time high is about $0.88 on volume-weighted data. The XLM to USD converter applies the live price to any amount.