Is XRP or Ethereum More Likely to Be a Millionaire Maker?

Most people who ask whether a cryptocurrency can turn them into a millionaire are really asking which asset gives them a decent chance of compounding their money meaningfully.

Crypto majors like XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) are commonly proposed candidates for that task. Both are firmly in large-cap territory, and, while neither is likely to be a classic millionaire maker from a small starting stake, both could reasonably help an investor get richer over a period of 10 or 20 years. The natural question is: Which one offers the better odds of boosting your net worth significantly from here?

Image source: Getty Images.

XRP is a concentrated bet on money plumbing

XRP is built to be financial plumbing for banks and other financial institutions, with its issuer, Ripple, positioning the XRP Ledger (XRPL) as infrastructure for those who need fast transaction settlement, cheap cross-border transfers, and regulatory-compliant real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Its chain is fast and cheap to use, and it also features its own native stablecoin, RLUSD, all of which makes it more appealing for the group of users it courts.

Instead of relying heavily on smart contracts created by third-party developers, the network incorporates many features directly into the protocol. Asset issuers can require authorization before users hold their tokens, freeze accounts when necessary, and enforce transfer restrictions directly via the ledger. Other tools like authorization flags and issuer-controlled freezes are explicitly pitched as enabling compliance for things like securities, funds, and tokenized debt, including U.S. Treasuries. That makes XRP relatively attractive for institutions that want a unified tech stack rather than assembling a patchwork of separate modules.

On the tokenization front, the XRPL is still small, but it's growing quickly. In mid-2025, the ledger had nearly $132 million in RWAs held for on-chain distribution, as well as $263 million of untradable RWAs tracked on the chain for general asset management and record-keeping purposes. These sums of money indicate that users in the target market are experimenting with their capital on the chain.

If institutions embrace it as their default financial rail, holders could see substantial upside. If they don't, investors are left with a chain that is excellent for its niche, but potentially overvalued.

Ethereum is the default operating system for on-chain finance

Ethereum is the main smart contract blockchain, hosting the crypto sector's largest decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, with a plethora of decentralized applications (dApps) and financial protocols across lending, decentralized exchanges (DEXes), stablecoins, and asset tokenization, among myriad other segments. It's the base layer where many other crypto projects live, and its value comes from being the coordination point for that ecosystem, and also the place where capital tends to aggregate by default when it enters the crypto sector.

Ethereum's footprint in DeFi remains dominant, and a significant factor in its ongoing relevance. It has roughly 60% of all DeFi's total value locked (TVL), which translates to nearly $72 billion in TVL on its chain. Most on-chain lending, borrowing, and yield-seeking (including staking) today still happens on Ethereum.

On the asset tokenization side, Ethereum is clearly ahead of XRP today. It hosts around $11.4 billion in tokenized real-world asset value that's tradable today, and $273 million in RWAs that are only on-chain for tracking and asset-management purposes.

So which coin has better odds of making you richer?

Both of these assets are really long-term bets on different slices of the same transition, which is to say the movement of value, payments, and financial contracts onto blockchains. Furthermore, both face plenty of competition from energetic smaller players, which will make accomplishing their respective goals somewhat challenging. And, with their market caps already in the hundred-billion-dollar range, investors would almost certainly need an unrealistically large initial commitment to have a chance of making $1 million from an investment, even considering that there's likely a lot of growth on the way for both.

But, with all of that said, if you forced a choice regarding which one is marginally more likely to produce very large gains from here, XRP probably wins by a nose.

Its investment thesis is narrower, and it has a more clearly defined group of users and capital to try to onboard, which leaves it more room for a large gain over time if big banks, funds, and perhaps even central banks meaningfully migrate some of their operations to the XRP Ledger. Meanwhile, Ethereum looks like the marginally safer option, as it's better established, more diversified in terms of which segments it competes in, and it's also more obviously aligned with how Wall Street is actually using blockchains today, even if its weak compliance features might ultimately leave it looking elsewhere.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.