XLM Flips XRP on Upbit as Stellar’s DTCC Deal Sparks South Korea FOMO
Retail traders are quickly rotating out of XRP and piling into Stellar, with South Korea emerging as the main hotspot for the latest wave of crypto momentum. The move has been strong enough to push XLM ahead of XRP in trading activity on Upbit, the country’s largest exchange.
Market analyst Xaif Crypto noted that Stellar climbed to the top of Upbit’s rankings after posting roughly $252 million in 24-hour volume, nearly double XRP’s $125 million.
More notably, it’s the first time XLM has overtaken XRP on the platform, signaling a clear surge in short-term buying pressure.
Well, the catalyst appears to be a “buy-the-news” reaction tied to a major institutional development whereby the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and the Stellar Development Foundation recently outlined plans to link DTCC’s tokenization infrastructure with the Stellar blockchain.
For pundits, the move was widely interpreted as a strong endorsement of Stellar’s positioning in the growing tokenized finance sector.
This reaction carries weight because DTCC sits at the core of global markets, processing and safeguarding trillions in securities transactions. Any integration with blockchain infrastructure tends to draw immediate attention from both institutional desks and retail traders looking for early exposure.
Ripple and Stellar May Be Building Different Pieces of the Same Future
The market response has been swift. XLM has rallied about 57% over the past week, climbing to $0.23, according to CoinCodex data. The momentum has also fueled a wave of FOMO-driven buying, particularly among traders positioning for exposure to tokenization narratives.
Still, framing the move as a direct XRP vs XLM showdown misses the broader trend taking shape.
DTCC’s engagement with Stellar doesn’t necessarily sideline the XRP Ledger or XRP; it reinforces a more likely outcome, an emerging multi-chain financial system where different networks serve different roles rather than competing for dominance.
In this structure, Stellar is increasingly associated with tokenized assets and securities infrastructure, while XRP continues to focus on cross-border payments and liquidity through Ripple’s global network. Both are targeting different layers of the financial system.
This distinction is why some analysts, including crypto researcher SMQKE, argue the long-term relationship between Ripple and Stellar may resemble a financial-services duopoly, similar to Visa and Mastercard, where two parallel systems coexist, each powering a different but complementary segment of global finance.