Stellar XLM: Price Drop Amid Hack and McAfee Promotion

As XLM proves to be an underrated and valuable asset, hackers target one of the coin's wallets.

Stellar (XLM) is fighting a good fight, trying to stay permanently among top-rated digital assets, not only in terms of market capitalization, but also of usability. While the market price is still volatile, crashing below $0.50, Stellar has seen more appreciation from investors recently, especially following the Ripple (XRP) slide.

For Stellar, while the dollar price fluctuated wildly, the ratio against BTC seems preserved. XLM has recovered from dips before, so this would be a test on how well the price survives the shakedown. The new arrivals among prominent digital assets have fared differently, with Ripple (XRP) and IOTA (MIOTA) fizzling out, and TRON (TRX) and Verge (XVG) correcting sharply.

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XLM is an asset that has seen a smoother price change. But the recent market drop took no heed of the recent promotion from John McAfee:

"Coin of the week: Lumen (XLM) - called Stellar by some - though Stellar is the name of the network that created the coins. One of the fastest and cheapest crypto transactions. Lumens facilitate the financing of Third World projects and is called by some “The next Bitcoin”."— John McAfee (@officialmcafee)January 15, 2018

The long-term hopes for Stellar are that it would create the more updated, functional infrastructure and scale better. This has been the promise of similar digital assets like XVG, WAVES, RAI Blocks (XRB) and others.

A web-based, semi-centralized wallet got attacked by hackers recently, taking away more than 669,000 XLM worth around $400,000. The loss is comparatively small by crypto standards, but with the potential for price appreciation, the threat has been serious.

The glitch happened to the Blackwallet service, where a semi-centralized storage of wallets attracted a hacker. The XLM has been diverted to Bittrex, and users are hoping this may reveal the hacker's identity. The funds were diverted after a DNS attack, and users logged in despite social media warnings from the wallet's creators.

XLM storage is supported by the Ledger wallet, and there is an official desktop client available.