This bearish 2018 is about to come to an end, and more voices from the crypto space are convinced that 2019 will bring significant changes.

While 2018 was a year for a lot of significant developments and partnerships in the crypto world, many believe that 2019 will definitely be the year of mainstream adoption.

Speaking about partnerships, Stellar managed to close a deal with IBM which will turn out hugely successful for a bunch of reasons.

This is why XLM holders keep holding on to their coins ahead of 2019.

IBM Blockchain World Wire can defeat Ripple’s xRapid

IBM teamed up with Stellar to facilitate cross-border remittances. The IBM Blockchain World Wire is the result of this merger, and it plans to take on Ripple’s xRapid and xCurrent solutions.

IBM’s solution promises to bring lowers costs and higher speeds.

Stellar’s main capabilities

The best features boasted by Stellar include the following: speed and high affordability, and the fact that it’s a decentralized system which is also ideal for micropayments.

As we already said, it’s massively essential partnerships are also a plus for the company beh8ing XLM.

The company is also targeting the unbanked, just like Ripple and they are a non-profit organization with the primary focus on improving cross-border payments and remittance.

More advantages of the Stellar-IBM partnership

This partnership also places Stellar in a great position in the financial services industry as well. For instance, Visa is working with IBM, and this is great for Stellar.

Along with Ripple, Stellar is also taking the SWIFT payment system off the map of cross-border transactions, bringing low costs and high speeds.

Another significant advantage that Sellar boasts is the fact that it has a use case in asset tokenization.

As a conclusion, the partnership between Stellar and IBM only makes Stellar more credible in the crypto space.