Which Cryptocurrency Could Be a Millionaire Maker? Dogecoin vs. Tron

Key Points

• Dogecoin is the king of meme coins, and it may be getting upgrades soon.

• Tron is the biggest stablecoin-focused chain by far.

• Both theoretically have avenues for growth, but only one is executing.

• 10 stocks we like better than Dogecoin ›

Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) and Tron (CRYPTO: TRX) are two cryptocurrencies that have little in common -- except, of course, for their seemingly evergreen ability to make investors think that there are riches to be made with a purchase.

But can either of these coins actually deliver on making investors into millionaires -- or, failing that, at least making them a bit wealthier than they are today? Let's compare and contrast them to answer that question.

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Image source: Getty Images.

Tron looks good -- from afar

The investment thesis for Tron starts and ends with stablecoins, which it's intended to be a platform for.

It carries the bulk of Tether's (CRYPTO: USDT) USDT stablecoin float, making it the primary settlement rail for USDT transfers across the world. USDT is the largest and most heavily traded stablecoin, with a market cap of $170.2 billion. That makes the Tron network a noteworthy piece of infrastructure within the crypto sector, even if it isn't necessarily systemically important.

Its scale matters because the platform can charge tiny slivers of fees millions of times per day, generating a lot of revenue. In other words, if USDT supply and use keep expanding on Tron, it should continue to benefit from network demand over time and gain in value. So there's a real engine of value generation here, and, in case it wasn't obvious, there is a lot of genuine economic activity happening on the chain.

Unfortunately, the coin already commands a market cap of $32.4 billion, which makes a 100x gain mathematically implausible without downright legendary adoption and gargantuan new fee streams beyond USDT settlement. Even a multiple of 10 would likely require both continued dominance in stablecoin flows and diversification into higher-value services for many years.

With competition in the stablecoin management segment intensifying rapidly, driven by a handful of new market entrants over the last couple of months, it seems extremely improbable for any one player, including Tron, to achieve total victory. So we need to put the hopes of this coin making people into millionaires to bed, as it isn't going to happen.

There is also a problematic legal overhang that threatens Tron's utility as a general wealth-building investment. Quite a few Tron-linked wallet addresses have been implicated in illicit finance flows by terrorist groups and internationally sanctioned entities, keeping regulatory-compliance risks firmly in the realm of the possible even as Tether tightens monitoring and blacklist capabilities. It's currently unclear what the chain's plan is to deal with this issue, so investors should assume the risk is real and significant until proved otherwise.

In short, Tron has a clearer economic engine than most Layer-1 blockchains, but its size and legal risks argue for tempered expectations.

Dogecoin's brand can carry it only so far

Dogecoin has something money cannot easily buy, and which Tron certainly does not have: the durability in being a meme coin. Practically everyone on the internet recognizes the mischievous dog mascot, and even Elon Musk has been known to riff on the meme in public.

But as a meme coin, that's pretty much all it has. Without frothy market conditions and an injection of hype from rising prices, there's little else that can carry the coin aloft other than sentiment.

That may eventually change, but don't hold your breath.

Its developers have proposed adding an interesting new feature that would enable verification of zero-knowledge proofs (don't worry about what that means), and perhaps also smart-contract support, both of which could open doors for other new features down the line. Still, even adding those would not turn Dogecoin into a full smart-contract chain overnight or create an obvious path to platform-level fee capture.

The same market cap reality facing Tron is a problem here, too. From its high base of $39.9 billion, the probability of a durable 50 to 100 price multiple is very low without transformative utility that draws sticky, monetized activity on-chain. As well as a simultaneous hype-driven run-up, which probably won't happen and certainly can't be predicted in advance.

There's a clear winner here

So, which of these coins is more likely to be a millionaire maker? The truth is that neither is likely to deliver.

Nonetheless, Tron is the more plausible candidate of the pair because of its huge, sticky utility in USDT transfers and built-in mechanism to benefit as transaction volumes grow. That also makes Tron the better option for wealth-building in general, though its reputation for having plenty of sketchy or outright illegal on-chain activity is something that you shouldn't take lightly in terms of risk.

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Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.