Stellar (XLM) & Cardano (ADA) – The total cryptocurrency market is booming this morning, as various crypto-positive news reports have given investors more confidence in the future of the cryptocurrency industry and market.

Source: CoinMarketCap

Wells Fargo and Bank of America announced this morning that both banks have applied for new blockchain and crypto related patents. Mastercard has even filed a new patent for consumer protection and payment transactions, using blockchain technology.

Due to all this crypto-positive news, mostly all coins in the top 100 are in the green, and some are seeing major percentage gains. Let’s take a closer look at the coins leading the market this morning.

Stellar (XLM)

Stellar is currently leading the top 50 coins for most percentage gains on the market today. At press time, XLM is trading at $0.295 a coin, up 28.12%, in 24 hours.

Stellar is the first distributed ledger protocol to receive Sharia compliance certification in the money transfer and asset tokenization space.
Read more: https://t.co/FYiRmGxt6y
— Stellar (@StellarOrg) July 17, 2018

Nearly 24 hours ago, the Stellar Foundation announced that Stellar was the first distributed ledger protocol to receive a Sharia compliance certification in the money transfer and asset tokenization space. The Shrariyah Revier Bureau (SRB) is the leading international Sharia advisory agency licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain.

SRB and Stellar’s new partnership means that the Stellar ecosystem can now reach regions where financial services require compliance with Islamic financial principles. Stellar technology can now be integrated into Sharia-compliant product and service offerings in these following countries:

Bahrain
Indonesia
Kuwait
Malaysia
Oman
Qatar
Saudia Arabia
UAE

On top of this great news for the Stellar ecosystem, IBM announced that a “crypto dollar” could be the key to blockchain payments and one day a fed coin.

IBM thinks a “crypto dollar” may be the key to blockchain payments—and eventually a Fed Coin https://t.co/wullaEVRI0
— The Ledger (@FortuneLedger) July 17, 2018

IBM has had a long-standing working relationship with the Stellar Foundation, and the new STron (available on Binance)ghold platform was built on Stellar. STron (available on Binance)ghold has just launched a new stable coin called “STron (available on Binance)ghold USD.” This new coin will be in competition with TETHer (USDT).