Is XRP a Millionaire Maker?

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) is a globally traded asset that already sits near the top of the crypto market by value, with a market cap of around $140 billion. That scale alone makes the dream of buying it now and waking up a millionaire later much harder than it sounds.

At the same time, its story is getting more interesting. Ripple, the company that builds the infrastructure around the XRP Ledger (XRPL), just pulled in a fresh $500 million investment from Wall Street names, and it plans to spend that money pushing deeper into institutional payments, crypto custody, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. So the real question is not whether XRP can make you a millionaire by itself, but whether it deserves a spot as a serious, long-term wealth builder in a diversified portfolio.

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This coin isn't a millionaire maker anymore

When people talk about a cryptocurrency as a "millionaire maker," they are usually hoping for something like a 100x return on a modest initial stake. If you put $10,000 into a coin and it grows 100 times, you are suddenly looking at $1 million.

For XRP, the numbers aren't going to cooperate. A 100x move from here would push its market cap into the tens of trillions of dollars, more than the current value of the entire crypto market and rivaling global asset classes like gold or U.S. equities as a whole. It won't happen.

In other words, the same attributes that make XRP look like a relatively mature asset and less fragile than other crypto projects also work against the fantasy of life-changing upside happening overnight from here. But, if XRP does extremely well over the next decade, a 3x or more move is very plausible, so it could still be a great wealth-building pick.

What Ripple's new war chest can actually do for this coin

If XRP is unlikely to be a millionaire maker from current levels, why do some investors still take it seriously? The answer lives on the infrastructure side of the story, where Ripple is quietly building out a full stack of crypto tools for financial institutions.

In early November, Ripple announced a $500 million strategic investment round led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities. The company says the cash will support product development for payments, transfers, stablecoin issuance, institutional crypto custody, and its prime brokerage services, all using the XRP Ledger as a backbone. So it's very reasonable to expect XRP to get more valuable on the basis of this investment, as its ledger is going to continue to get more upgrades that create sources of demand for the coin.

This year, Ripple has highlighted new tokenized U.S. Treasury products coming to the ledger, and other early deployments in areas like land registries and private credit platforms, all of which show how real-world assets can migrate onto XRPL over time. If institutions continue to adopt those tools and use XRPL as a hub to manage their tokenized assets, XRP benefits in a few ways.

Some use cases require XRP directly for settlement or fees, which creates structural demand. Others, like tokenized Treasuries, bring more traffic and liquidity into the broader ecosystem, making the network harder to displace. And the more Ripple bakes compliance features into the protocol rather than leaving them to ad hoc smart contracts, the more attractive the ledger looks to cautious regulated players who would rather not juggle a dozen vendors to meet the know-your-customer and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements.

The potential fly in the ointment here is timing and competition. Ethereum, Solana, and a host of other chains are also vying to be the preferred home for tokenized assets, as well as other segments like decentralized finance (DeFi). If Ripple executes well, its new capital could help it win a meaningful slice of those markets and lift XRP along the way. If it stumbles, that $500 million investment simply buys it more time to chase a moving target.

With this setup, XRP's investment thesis looks quite strong. It's still a good candidate for being a multibagger investment for those who buy it now, even if it won't make most people millions. But you'll still need to be patient and fairly risk-tolerant for this asset to work in your portfolio, as it has a long road ahead, and the competition won't be sleeping.

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