South Korea's leading cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has announced the temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals of the Stellar network's native token, XLM, and other assets on the network. According to a statement from the exchange, nothing serious happened, and the event was caused by the need for maintenance of the Stellar network and the wallets in it.
Given that Stellar's official information sources are quiet, and that similar temporary suspensions are not seen on exchanges other than Upbit, it can be assumed that this is a problem directly with the South Korean platform.
Stellar (XLM) price action
The XLM token has not been particularly affected by the event either, with its price falling by more than 2% at the moment but in tandem with the rest of the crypto market.
Interestingly, since the beginning of the year, XLM has outgrown XRP by more than 4%, which could generally be considered its competitor. The rivalry dates back to the days when Jed McCaleb left Ripple — which uses XRP in its cross-border money transactions — and founded Stellar, which uses XLM.
It seems most of the time that XLM is trying to catch up and act as a kind of beta to XRP, that is, reacting by inertia to all narratives that move the price of its larger competitor. However, it now seems that the division into senior and junior coins is gradually being erased.