Ethereum Is Crushing XRP in 1 Key Arena. Should You Buy It With $1,000?

Capital tends to pool where it's convenient to manage, and where there's a lucrative yield given the risk. In crypto, that often means capital flows to the chain that already hosts the most activity, as activity doesn't happen unless there's money to be made.

That dynamic shows up the most clearly in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). You can think of RWAs as traditional financial instruments like stocks or bonds that are represented on a blockchain as crypto tokens, so that their ownership and transfer rules can be automated and streamlined. In that arena, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) is currently beating XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) by a mile -- but does that mean it's worth investing $1,000 in it today?

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The big money scoreboard shows that Ethereum is the leader

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) projects that the value of tokenized assets could reach about $16 trillion by 2030. That means there's an enormous amount of growth in store for the blockchains that can market themselves as being good places to manage those assets.

As of Feb. 10, Ethereum hosts $14.6 billion of tokenized asset value that's tradeable on its network, up 16% from just 30 days earlier. It's the blockchain with the most tokenized assets by far.

In contrast, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) hosts just $303.8 million in tradeable assets, up 8% in the same period. That makes it a leader in the tokenized asset sector, but far from being in the top five. So, for the moment at least, Ethereum's base of tokenized assets parked on the chain for management is not only bigger but also growing much faster than XRP's.

Having a bigger asset base usually means having more liquidity, and more downstream apps that can plug into those assets. In turn, that tends to lead to a more vibrant and economically valuable blockchain ecosystem.

Therefore, if you're allocating $1,000 toward building a crypto portfolio, Ethereum looks like the better core holding for exposure to the RWA tokenization trend. It's already where the bulk of assets sit, and it's closer to being the default choice for asset managers who want to manage their holdings on a blockchain.

XRP can still be a good play

Don't count XRP out. It can still grow a lot thanks to asset tokenization, just in a slightly different segment.

Earlier, we discussed tradeable RWAs, where Ethereum has a major lead. But tradeable tokenized assets aren't the only kind that exist. Some tokenized assets are tokenized solely for the sake of easier record-keeping, rather than to make them easier to trade. Those are called "represented" tokenized assets, because the token is just a representation of metadata about the asset.

On that front, the XRPL's represented tokenized asset value is $1.5 billion, up 267% from 30 days earlier. Ethereum only has $204.8 million in represented tokenized assets, down 25% in the same time.

So, while represented tokenized assets are probably not as favorable in terms of their price effect on the coin, they still represent that the underlying financial technology is being used for something.

In other words, Ethereum is the better buy for exposure to tokenized assets, but XRP isn't a bad choice either. Just be aware that due to the persistent crypto market downturn, it's quite risky to buy any cryptocurrency at this particular moment.

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