Rakuten just announced an interesting move - starting from the 15th, they will support XRP payments in Rakuten Pay. This means their 44 million users can directly spend Ripple in over 5 million stores across Japan. Not only that, Rakuten also allows users to exchange points for XRP, trade spot assets within the app, and has a dedicated Rakuten wallet for storage. Previously, Rakuten already supported Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash, and now adding XRP seems to be part of their layout in the digital asset ecosystem. People on the Ripple side say this is an important signal for the large-scale adoption of digital currencies. Japan's retail giants beginning to seriously integrate crypto payments feels like a big deal.

I've been thinking about a question recently: why is XLM always undervalued in the market? Traditional international remittance systems have long needed reform. Cross-border transfers are slow, expensive, and take several days, which is a nightmare for billions of people worldwide without bank accounts. The Stellar network was created to solve this problem, and XLM, as its native asset, carries the core functions of this system. Let's start with Stellar's design philosophy. It doesn't aim to overthrow the entire financial system like Bitcoin does, nor is it just for hype like some projects. Stellar's goal is pragmatic: connect global financial institutions, payment processors, and retail users, making cross-border transfers instant. XLM plays a crucial role here; it is the network's anti-spam mechanism and also serves as a bridge currency connecting different fiat currencies. Why is this important? Imagine a Filipino worker wanting to send dollars to their family. The traditional way involves multiple correspondent banks, each charging fees, and the whole process can take 3-5 days. With Stellar? USD is instantly converted into XLM, transferred via blockchain (3-5 seconds, cost less than a penny), and upon arrival, immediately converted into pesos. Neither sender nor receiver needs to understand cryptocurrencies; the system handles it automatically. This is the real value of XLM. Now, compare it with XRP. Both were founded by the same person (Jed McCaleb), and their technical foundations are similar, both using efficient consensus mechanisms instead of mining. But their strategies are completely different. XRP takes a top-down approach, targeting large multinational banks and central banks. XLM, on the other hand, is bottom-up, focusing on helping individual users in developing countries, small payment processors, and Web3 developers. This difference determines their respective market positions. The most interesting recent development for XLM is its evolution. People used to think of it just as a payment tool, but the launch of Soroban smart contracts changed everything. Now, Stellar is not just a payment lane but a full-fledged programmable ecosystem. Developers are building DeFi protocols, lending platforms, and various dApps on it. This means XLM's use cases have expanded significantly—from a simple transfer bridge to assets locked in DeFi contracts. More importantly, in the RWA (Real World Asset) tokenization field, traditional financial giants like Franklin Templeton are issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in tokenized funds on Stellar. Why choose Stellar? Because it has native compliance tools (freeze functions, whitelist management), transactions can be finalized instantly, and fees are negligible. This makes it a perfect fit for institutional investors. Of course, XLM also faces challenges. The explosive growth of stablecoins on Layer-1s like Solana and Layer-2s like Arbitrum creates competition for Stellar's low-cost cross-chain payments. Additionally, XLM's historical performance has been relatively dull; with a large circulating supply, it often lags behind projects with stronger narratives during bull markets. But in the long run, the investment logic for XLM is quite clear. It’s not an asset that will make you rich overnight, but one with real institutional partnerships and practical use cases—an infrastructure. Companies like IBM and MoneyGram are already using Stellar’s network. As RWA and DeFi continue to heat up into 2026, demand for XLM as the core asset of this ecosystem will keep growing. Overall, if you're looking for a speculative asset that can double quickly, XLM might not be the answer. But if you value institutional adoption, real-world applications, and long-term fundamentals, XLM deserves a place on your investment list. It’s a stable, utility-oriented asset whose potential has been seriously underestimated amid the broader trend of global financial infrastructure reform.