Stellar (XLM) has overtaken Bitcoin Cash (BCH) in cryptocurrency market capitalization rankings, reaching 16th place with a valuation of about $7.55 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin Cash fell to 18th place with roughly $6.61 billion, just behind Near Protocol's $6.66 billion.
XLM posted a gain of more than 13% over the previous 24 hours and nearly 14% on the week. Trading volume rose about 69% to approximately $520 million in the latest session. The rally began on September 16 from a low of $0.172, coinciding with a broader market rebound and the mainnet launch of Stellar's Adapter upgrade, Protocol 28.
Protocol 28 brought faster consensus under load, atomic upgrades for fleets of contracts, and a safer standard way to migrate contract data. Stellar's ledger close time dropped from around 5.7 seconds to roughly 5 seconds, throughput improved by 10–15%, and the network recorded a peak of 216.1 transactions per second across 100 consecutive blocks. Some contract calls required up to 2x fewer instructions.
Bitcoin Cash, by contrast, cooled after a sharp advance. BCH surged from $213 on September 16 to a $365 high on September 23 after CME Group announced BCH futures and micro futures would launch on October 19, pending regulatory review. At the time of writing, BCH was down roughly 4.5% over 24 hours to around $331.
