Something else about XLM, IBM is making it the Ethereum of the finance world. Remittance has different needs then what Bitcoin or even Ethereum can provide and XLM can already handle massive transactions per second, far more than Ethereum. You could host XRP on top of XLM along side a slew of other public and private finance coins. Ripples customers who buy private versions of the rippletech chains can have their private ripple solution run on top of IBM's XLM based financial blockchain platform. The more I think about it, the more I think XLM is going to be huge, thats big picture and another similarity to the Ethereum/Microsoft alliance.