I've been invested in various crypto coins since early 2012 - mining and trading various coins of the day, and investing in a slim few for the long term. In my experience there have been few platforms as promising as Stellar, and I hope to detail my reasoning below. I'll throw in my obligatory "I am not an investment professional" here, but I hope to outline some of the benefits I see in Stellar that I think make it a good investment for the future.
Team
Most alt-coins are fly by night, run by individuals looking to cash in on the newest fad. A team that sticks around for more than a few months is something to be celebrated. Stellar has a team of 12 employees ranging from developers to partnership outreach. Most of them have been around since Stellar launched in late 2014 and I've verified their employment and work history on LinkedIn. Another good sign is they are hiring!, which an organization who is not expecting to grow would not be pursuing. Take a look at their list of board members and advisers as well, who range from VC's to prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. https://www.stellar.org/about/
Non Profit
This goes back to trust. The Stellar Foundation was formed as a non-profit, separating its employees and the founders from overnight profits. Their mission is to bring fast and easy transactions to undeveloped countries where traditional banking, which will help increase lumen distribution in some of the most widely populated areas in the world. Initial focus was Africa, and lately various 3rd parties are announcing support for projects in other parts of the world like the Philippians. Stellar had initial funding/backing by payments processor Stripe, who continues to advise the group today.
Comparison to Ripple
Ripple and Stellar are commonly compared to one another when discussing investments. Stellar was initially forked from Ripple back in 2014. Ripple was in part created by Jed McCaleb, who left the organization to start Stellar. Jed has now left the Foundation and is running Lightyear.io which is a separate commercial entity created to build partnerships (similar to the relationship between Linux and Red Hat). At this point Ripple has the first mover advantage, but Stellar is now running on a new code base that allows transfers to be faster and cheaper. Despite the similarities Ripple is currently valued at $.244 USD, while Stellar is valued at $.039 USD, a possible 6x spread for Stellar.
I've run out of time for now, but there are a few more points I will be back to touch on including distribution advantages and recent partnerships with groups like Deloitte and Bloom Solutions. I look forward to discussion related to any points I may have missed! Why are you investing in Stellar?
Best,
enjoi
