XLM and XRP - The Cousins Who Don't Get Along
Updated
Over a year ago, I made a bottom call on Stellar, and also made a follow-up. The targets haven't been reached from that original analysis, but the bottom price range was accurate. 
I've recently talked about XRP and XLM. This post focuses on these two coins.
Here we have two coins that have remained somewhat correlated over time, although XLM also performed much better than XRP for most of 2018. They move together at times, and certainly they dropped together recently. This makes sense, since they are historically tied (they have the same founder, who also owns a substantial amount of XRP). From a technical perspective, XLM is still in a bullish structure, and it simply retested the previous $0.10-0.11 resistance as support. It still has room in the uptrend channel to fall to the bottom, but currently it's looking like it might want to break towards the top of the channel, or out of the channel entirely. If it does, I think it can go on a pretty massive rally. Potential targets are shown in green.
XRP, on the other hand, retraced its entire recent move up, and is barely holding on to the long term broken downtrend as support. I think there's a chance for it to reach $0.45 again soon, but it could easily just drop right back down again. I don't trust any moves from XRP in its current state.
From a fundamental perspective, Stellar has already seen pretty substantial adoption - CBDC's (look at the Ukraine news from today), IBM, USDC, and the list goes on. Additionally, Stellar is seen as more friendly to regulation. Ripple has decided the combative route. Not only that, but Ripple has dug itself into a hole - by labeling the lawsuit as a challenge to ALL cryptocurrencies, they are deflecting the blame. For progress to be made in society, further division is not what we need. Brad's "us versus them" mentality doesn't do it for me. I mean, why even bring China into the conversation? The lawsuit isn't about attacking cryptocurrencies. It's about attacking a couple of men who boasted about price while profiting massively from an asset they received for free and then sold to retail investors - without designating the asset as a security.
There's just too much drama and uncertainty for me to justify holding XRP. As I mentioned recently, I bought XRP with an average entry of $0.26 and then sold for LTC at 0.47.So far, my decision to drop XRP for LTC and keep XLM has been a good one. I'm just sharing the technicals and fundamentals behind that choice. I think when Jed left Ripple, he realized that he needed to develop a different spin on crypto - one of financial inclusion - rather than focusing on banks and profit. He probably realized he could still make plenty of money this way while also seeming more compliant and ethical. Ironically, banks might end up using the Stellar network to a much greater extent than XRP.
I think XLM has a very good chance of continuing its uptrend, while I suspect XRP price to be somewhat confined to a range until there is more clarity. Yes, much of XRP's usage is outside the U.S. But I just don't like how Ripple presents itself. This is only my personal opinion, and should not be taken as financial advice!
-Victor Cobra
I've recently talked about XRP and XLM. This post focuses on these two coins.
Here we have two coins that have remained somewhat correlated over time, although XLM also performed much better than XRP for most of 2018. They move together at times, and certainly they dropped together recently. This makes sense, since they are historically tied (they have the same founder, who also owns a substantial amount of XRP). From a technical perspective, XLM is still in a bullish structure, and it simply retested the previous $0.10-0.11 resistance as support. It still has room in the uptrend channel to fall to the bottom, but currently it's looking like it might want to break towards the top of the channel, or out of the channel entirely. If it does, I think it can go on a pretty massive rally. Potential targets are shown in green.
XRP, on the other hand, retraced its entire recent move up, and is barely holding on to the long term broken downtrend as support. I think there's a chance for it to reach $0.45 again soon, but it could easily just drop right back down again. I don't trust any moves from XRP in its current state.
From a fundamental perspective, Stellar has already seen pretty substantial adoption - CBDC's (look at the Ukraine news from today), IBM, USDC, and the list goes on. Additionally, Stellar is seen as more friendly to regulation. Ripple has decided the combative route. Not only that, but Ripple has dug itself into a hole - by labeling the lawsuit as a challenge to ALL cryptocurrencies, they are deflecting the blame. For progress to be made in society, further division is not what we need. Brad's "us versus them" mentality doesn't do it for me. I mean, why even bring China into the conversation? The lawsuit isn't about attacking cryptocurrencies. It's about attacking a couple of men who boasted about price while profiting massively from an asset they received for free and then sold to retail investors - without designating the asset as a security.
There's just too much drama and uncertainty for me to justify holding XRP. As I mentioned recently, I bought XRP with an average entry of $0.26 and then sold for LTC at 0.47.So far, my decision to drop XRP for LTC and keep XLM has been a good one. I'm just sharing the technicals and fundamentals behind that choice. I think when Jed left Ripple, he realized that he needed to develop a different spin on crypto - one of financial inclusion - rather than focusing on banks and profit. He probably realized he could still make plenty of money this way while also seeming more compliant and ethical. Ironically, banks might end up using the Stellar network to a much greater extent than XRP.
I think XLM has a very good chance of continuing its uptrend, while I suspect XRP price to be somewhat confined to a range until there is more clarity. Yes, much of XRP's usage is outside the U.S. But I just don't like how Ripple presents itself. This is only my personal opinion, and should not be taken as financial advice!
-Victor Cobra
Note
Nice move up today. The top of the channel is around $0.222. Not following XRP at all, which is what I was implying with this post. XRP has also been dumped by Grayscale. Recently, there seemed to be a lot of misinformation in the Ripple community about Grayscale purchasing more XRP after the SEC news, but this was not the case. Grayscale did also dump some of their XLM, so if they choose to remove their entire XLM position as well, that could impact Lumens price negatively. Note
Rejected at the top of the channel so far Note
Well that was fast. Second breakout target hit already. Note
XLM is trying to stabilize around the first major resistance level ($0.28), but if the market corrects deeper, there's a chance it could drop back to test the broken uptrend resistance or the 50 MA on the 4H (red). If the wedge breaks to the downside, that would also be a signal for a deeper retrace. If it can break the wedge to the upside, perhaps a deeper correction will be avoided, and XLM can head towards $0.50 next. 
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