Approved in New York

More great news for cryptocurrency fans, Stellar Lumens (XLM), the primary rival of Ripple, has been approved for trading by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) on the itBit exchange. Stellar is one of the four new altcoins being added to the exchange.

“This also means we are now the first qualified custodian and licensed exchange to receive approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services to offer trading of Stellar Lumens.” – Official itBit Blog

The news comes after weeks of probing by regulators and comes alongside the news of the SEC stating that Ethereum is NOT a security and Ethereum Classic is to be added to Coinbase.

Is Stellar a Security?

Exchanges have been careful about which digital assets they list due to the SEC’s ongoing investigation. While the community has clarity that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities, assurance still needs to be given on the status of U.S.-based Ripple and XRP.

Stellar, however, has had no official statement from the SEC, but the types of approval and licence Stellar has received are deemed significant enough that it is likely not a security.

CEO of itBit’s parent company Paxos explained to Fortune:

“That’s why we’ve added them to the exchange,”

“If they were a security, you’d have to go through a different process.”

Stellar Here to Stay…

The origin story of Stellar actually started with Ripple. Stellar founder Jed McCaleb was one of the original founders of Ripple and started the now-closed Mt Gox exchange in late 2010.

Stellar’s protocol is inspired by Ripple’s. Both have the current minimum balance requirement of 20 XRP or XLM to activate a wallet, and both tokens were “pre-mined” or “pre-created,” rather than mined like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Approval For Stellar Lumen Trading In New York! Is It A Security.

Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/stellar/

Since the cryptocurrency boom and bust of late 2017, Stellar’s XLM is still down considerably, despite a brief surge in altcoin dominance in April.

More news indicating Stellar could be one to watch for the rest of 2018 is that it’s integrating Bitcoin’s flagship scaling solution, the Lightning Network! It has an ETA of launching in late 2018.

On its roadmap page, Stellar highlights how it does not need “saving” like Bitcoin and is “going from one good place to another.”