How to Buy XLM in Canada

Video Tutorial: How to Buy XLM with Netcoins

What Can I Do with XLM?

At its core, Stellar is a payment system that allows money to move across borders quickly and affordably. By doing so it seeks to solve the issues that plague the current financial system: mainly that it’s slow and expensive to move money worldwide. Here’s an example of the existing financial infrastructure and how Stellar aims to improve it.

Imagine you’re in Canada and wish to send money to your cousin, Ana, who lives in Brazil. You know your bank isn’t connected to her bank so you use a money service provider to send the money. It will take a few days to send money and you will be charged a high fee for doing so. Sure, you could pay a premium fee to expedite the process but it’s not ideal.

This is where Stellar comes in. Stellar is a decentralized platform connecting people, payment services and banks together. By collaborating, people can easily move money anywhere around the world at low costs.

So if you used Stellar to send money to Ana instead of a traditional money service provider, you’d find the Stellar network would convert your Canadian dollars into Brazilian Real in just a few seconds. Ana would then receive the full amount of money in her local currency, Brazilian Real, and not be charged any fees.

By removing the barrier to financial services, the Stellar network and its native cryptocurrency Lumens (XLM) are helping to fight poverty while empowering billions of people worldwide with financial opportunities. In short, people can use XLM to send XLM around the world, to transact with banks or people worldwide, or they buy XLM and hold it as an investment.

Related article: The Pros and Cons of Day-Trading vs. Long-Term Crypto Investing 

Is How Much XLM Can I Buy?

You don’t need to buy a lot of XLM to get started! You can buy fractions of an XLM. In fact, the smallest possible unit of XLM is called a stroop and is equivalent to 0.000001 XLM (6 decimal places). Many beginners start their XLM journey by accumulating small amounts of XLM. You can start as small as $10, or invest up to $10 million with Netcoins.

Why Buy XLM? 

When sending money around the world, banks will be involved in the process of approving, exchanging currencies and sending money. The more complex the chain of banks involved, the more complicated, expensive and time-consuming the process becomes.

Stellar on the other hand is a payment network looking to remove all the barriers for sending money worldwide. It’s allowing people to send money to each other even if they don’t have bank accounts. In this way, Stellar is solving the remittance problem that exists today.

Lumens was the cryptocurrency that was created from this initiative. In addition, here are four more reasons why people buy XLM:

XLM is decentralized. The Stellar network was released as a decentralized payment network for people around the world. This means that everybody – including the underbanked – win.

XLM is solving real-world problems. XLM acts as a cross-border payment system that allows financial entities and people alike to send money while at the same time reducing transaction speed and costs.

It’s highly divisible. XLM is a popular cryptocurrency. Its high volumes of liquidity makes it easier to enter and exit positions at very low costs. With XLM it’s easy to buy small amounts.

Cheaper price. Full XLM tokens can be had for mere pennies. This means investors can enjoy the feeling of owning an entire coin (or many of them) rather than just a fraction of one. 

How Do I Store My XLM?

You can buy XLM from crypto trading platforms, like Netcoins, and leave your XLM inside the platform. However, there are much safer options to storing your cryptocurrency as leaving them in exchanges can expose them to certain risks like hacking and theft.

The safest option to keeping your XLM secure is to transfer them into a crypto wallet. A crypto wallet is a type of digital wallet that is used to send and receive crypto, similar to a Google wallet or a physical wallet.

There are four different types of crypto wallets: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and web wallets.

Hardware wallets look like a USB device. They are considered to be offline wallets because they’re not connected to the internet. The fact they’re offline makes them more difficult to find and to hack. As such, they’re typically considered the safest option to store your crypto.

Desktop wallets on the other hand are programs that store your crypto on your computer’s hard drive. Mobile wallets perform the same function as a desktop wallet but on a mobile device instead.

Finally, a web wallet is an online service that sends and stores your crypto on your behalf anywhere, anytime. Similar to checking your email.

Desktop, mobile and web wallets are all connected to the internet (and referred to as “hot wallets”). Like mentioned earlier, they are more susceptible to potential risks. On the other hand, hardware wallets (or “cold wallets”) are considered safer options as they are not connected to the internet.

This is why it’s often advised that Canadians pull out their XLM from crypto trading platforms and send them directly to a hardware wallet. Only in this way, are they in full possession of cryptocurrency and can keep them secure.

What are Stellar Lumens (XLM) next steps?

XLM has a big vision for the future of finance but it’s still very much in its early stages, much like the wider cryptocurrency space. As long as resources, talent and innovation continue to pour into the Stellar network, we may see growth with Lumens XLM as a crypto asset over time.

XLM’s focus will continue to be around developing economies worldwide, particularly when it comes to remittances and bank loans to the unbanked population. The great benefit with the Stellar network is that it doesn’t charge people or banks for using the network.

In addition, the world continues to become more digital. Cryptocurrencies are becoming more widely adopted and the Web3 space continues to mature suggesting that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

Related article: Three Ways to Make Your Crypto Assets Work for You 

This post is for informational purposes only. For proper financial advice, we recommend you speak to a financial advisor.