Better Long-Term Crypto Hold: XRP or Ethereum?

Over a very long holding period, it pays to invest in an asset that has more than one way to win, and that's especially true if you're looking at an investment in crypto. Any single narrative can stall, and any suboptimal qualities can become severe constraints.

On that note, both XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) are popularly proposed as being good long-term crypto investments. Let's walk through what each can offer over a 10-year hold.

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XRP's institutional edge is also a drawback

Ripple, the company that issues XRP, has built one of the most compliance-friendly networks in crypto.

With features for built-in identity verification, account freezing, transaction clawbacks, and authorized trustlines, asset issuers and network operators can enforce custody rules at the protocol level. That's a meaningful advantage when courting financial institutions like banks, whose legal teams need to sign off on any new technology that touches capital.

Given that the XRP Ledger (XRPL) now hosts about $1 billion in tradeable tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), up from $116 million one year ago and practically zero two years ago, it's obviously true that at least some institutions find it to be a useful platform for managing tokenized assets -- the crypto ownership rights to assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. If the trend toward tokenization continues, XRP's network is thus positioned to be a recipient of some significant capital inflows, which could boost the price of the coin.

The trouble is that XRP's original investment thesis, where it would function as a bridge currency for cross-border payments to avoid fees and expedite transfers, is eroding badly. Ripple's own stablecoin, RLUSD, recently crossed $1.5 billion in market cap, and the company now promotes stablecoin settlement more prominently than XRP-based liquidity. So banks can use Ripple's money transfer network without touching a single coin, and the more that RLUSD gains traction, the less XRP is needed. It's still useful for paying transaction fees on the XRPL, but those fees are very small.

The bigger issue is that the ledger's broader ecosystem remains small because it focuses almost exclusively on financial institutions and their asset management needs rather than on a broader audience of users. For example, XRPL's decentralized finance (DeFi) total value locked (TVL) is just $49 million. DeFi isn't one of Ripple's focuses for XRP, as XRP can't be staked, so holders have no native way to earn yield during the course of a long-term investment, which means their returns have one less tailwind compared to other networks.

Thus, if Ripple can't continue to successfully develop new features for the XRPL such that its target users find it to be useful -- and actually using the network creates a source of demand for XRP somehow -- the coin won't have good odds of appreciating much in value over time.

Ethereum takes the broader approach

Generating passive yield on an asset can meaningfully help with compounding value over years.

Therefore, for an investment held for the next 10 years or so, Ethereum's staking is an important differentiator because it directly accrues to holders at a current annualized rate of about 2.9%. What's more, some Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) now offer staking-enabled products, letting investors earn a yield without managing their own infrastructure or custody of their own coins.

Ethereum's ecosystem outside of its staking segment also has more independent demand drivers than any other chain, which is a big part of the reason the coin has value. It currently commands just over half of global DeFi TVL. Similarly, it leads in asset tokenization, with more than $16.5 billion in tradeable tokenized assets on its chain. And it's also positioning to be a major venue for agentic commerce, where AI agents autonomously transact on-chain, assuming they ever do.

Of course, Ethereum is not risk-free in any sense; its price is down 35% in the last five years, so holding it for a long time is not any guarantee of getting a positive return. Nonetheless, its inherent diversification as the most-used chain for DeFi, tokenized assets, and also for general-purpose smart contracts means that any single setback won't undermine the thesis.

Which coin deserves the longer hold?

For a multiyear commitment, Ethereum is the stronger pick. Its staking yield and much broader mandate in terms of its target users and target use cases give it multiple paths to capturing value from the future of cryptocurrency, even if some will inevitably turn out to be dead ends.

XRP's compliance tooling is a real strength, but the narrowness of its demand drivers -- and growing competition from Ripple's own stablecoin -- leave its long-term price trajectory harder to be confident in.

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