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Digital currency stellar soared 20 percent Wednesday after online payments company Stripe said it may add support for the cryptocurrency.
Stellar, or XLM, climbed to about 58.96 cents, up 21.2 percent on the day, according to CoinMarketCap. That gave the digital currency a market value of about $10.3 billion, making it the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Stellar traded near 58.1 cents as of 9:05 a.m., ET.
Stripe handles payments for more than 100,000 businesses, including Warby Parker and OpenTable. The company announced Tuesday afternoon that it would stop processing bitcoin transactions on April 23 due to slower transaction rates and high fees.
But “we may add support for Stellar (to which we provided seed funding) if substantive use continues to grow,” Stripe product manager Tom Karlo said in a blog post.
Stellar 30-day performance
Source: CoinMarketCap
“It’s possible that Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, or another Bitcoin variant, will find a way to achieve significant popularity while keeping settlement times and transaction fees very low,” he said. “Bitcoin itself may become viable for payments again in the future.”
Bitcoin held mostly steady Tuesday after the Stripe news and traded 3.5 percent higher near $11,230 as of 9:06 a.m., ET, according to CoinDesk. CoinDesk’s bitcoin price index tracks prices from digital currency exchanges Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Bitfinex.
The seven-day average confirmation time for bitcoin transactions has leaped up to well over a day, according to Blockchain.info. The median bitcoin transaction fee soared to a high of $34 in late December and remained above $10 until the last few days, according to bitinfocharts.
