Stellar’s Foundation Just Destroyed Half the Supply of Its Lumens Cryptocurrency

MEXICO CITY – The Stellar Development Foundation has burned 55 billion of its XLM tokens, over half the cryptocurrency’s supply, CEO Denelle Dixon announced from the stage of the Stellar Meridian conference Monday.

Previously, there had been 105 billion XLM in existence, with 20 billion in circulation. With this burn, the supply has shrunk to 50 billion.

“We didn’t start by wanting to burn. We started by asking ‘what do we need?’” Dixon told the room of roughly 200 attendees. “As much as we wanted to use the lumens that we held, it was very hard to get them into the market.”

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The organization decided instead it was better to project how much it could actually use over a 10-year period and calibrate to that number. “To derive a plan from an arbitrary number serves no purpose,” Dixon said.

The news was greeted warmly by the crowd, many of whom likely own the token. One…