Stellar to hold its first conference in Mexico City

Stellar is planning to hold its first-ever conference—dubbed “Stellar Meridian”—in Mexico City Nov. 4-5. Describing its ecosystem as "the most active in fintech," Stellar plans to use Meridian as an avenue for information sharing, community building and, of course, networking. The idea for a conference was floated in Stellar’s “Roadmap” last month.

"Meridian is an opportunity to discuss big-picture questions around financial inclusion, efficiency, and innovation. Where are the greatest applications for Stellar in our financial present? What roles will Stellar have in our financial future?" said the company in a press release.

Stellar was built to connect individuals with financial institutions. The Stellar Protocol is an open source network used to facilitate global money for a fraction of a penny. Created in 2014 as a Ripple fork, Stellar differs from Ripple in its vision, targeting individuals instead of banks. Stellar Lumens (XLM) are the native assets of the protocol and it's the 10th largest cryptocurrency per data from coinmarketcap. XLM has a market cap of $2.3 billion with around $295 million traded in a 24-hour period, at press time.

The conference is intended to be an avenue to discuss how Stellar can shape the future of payments globally, and the impact the protocol could have on financial inclusion and transaction efficiency. Stellar says it chose Mexico City as the venue of its first conference because of its "thriving blockchain community" and emergence as the epicenter of cross-border payments.