Better Buy for Risk-Tolerant Investors: XRP vs. Hyperliquid

If you can handle a lot of volatility and downside risk without losing sleep overnight, you're a rare breed, and you're likely a risk-tolerant investor, which makes you well positioned to survive investing in crypto. On that note, both XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) and Hyperliquid (CRYPTO: HYPE) carry so much risk that neither belongs in a portfolio built around capital preservation.

But for the right type of investor, one of these coins is a better choice than the other. Here's why.

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One coin recycles its revenue, the other barely registers its own fees

Hyperliquid is a relatively new blockchain purpose-built for trading crypto-financial derivatives; its native token is HYPE, which you need to buy to get exposure to it.

Its platform is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for a type of derivative called perpetual futures, which you can think of as a type of contract that lets people speculate on asset prices without the pesky expiration date constraints of options contracts.Today, Hyperliquid is home to about 70% of the decentralized perpetuals market, and in 2025, it collected about $844 million in trading fees as a result of trading activity on its network. About 97% of those fees flow into an automated system which buys HYPE on the open market and permanently destroys the purchased tokens.

Those mechanics create a virtuous cycle: More trading on the platform generates more fees, removing more tokens from circulation, thereby tightening its supply and biasing prices to the upside over time. The structure thus rewards holders proportionally to the protocol's actual usage. One key difference between Hyperliquid and other chains that also incur transaction fees is that the quantities of tokens removed from circulation on Hyperliquid tend to be several orders of magnitude greater, which makes the mounting scarcity of HYPE into an actual driver of price instead of just a theoretical element that's difficult to detect as a holder.

In contrast, XRP is a very different asset because it targets a different user base.

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) charges roughly $0.0002 per transaction, and it burns those fees rather than distributing them. That design is favorable for users of the network, specifically financial institutions that want to use it to manage their assets or easily move their tokenized value around, but it does almost nothing to transfer value to holders of XRP. In the first quarter of 2026, the XRPL burned about 12.4 million XRP or just 0.02% of the circulating supply.

Even as its on-chain activity has surged, XRP's price is down by 62% from its 2025 all-time high, as the relationship between activity and returns is extremely weak, especially in comparison to Hyperliquid. In other words, at present, it's a possible outcome for the XRPL to thrive as a piece of valuable financial infrastructure, while XRP itself captures only a thin skim and underperforms other assets. And that means it might not even matter how high your risk tolerance is if you buy it, as no amount of patience or calmness is going to fix that fundamental issue.

Hyperliquid is the better pick

Hyperliquid is a better cryptocurrency to buy at the moment, as it isn't lacking proof that its strategy of onboarding new traders reliably results in success for holders. Nonetheless, Hyperliquid's warts need airing.

Only about 25% of the token supply is circulating, and roughly 9.9 million new HYPE coins held by insiders unlock each month through 2027. In theory, if the current level of trading activity on its platform continues, with $183.4 billion in perpetual futures trading volume during the 30-day period ended May 6, it should be able to continue burning HYPE faster than the new supply is unlocked. If the level of activity drops, however, holders will see their value diluted.

For now, there's no indication of that happening, and Hyperliquid looks to be gaining and consolidating traction in its niche. It will take years before it's as established as XRP. Unlike XRP, it isn't backed by a well-known fintech like Ripple. Still, even if Hyperliquid is a bit riskier in terms of its maturity as a project, the fact that holders get a hearty cut of the activity on its chain means that its balance of risks and rewards is more favorable than XRP's.

Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Hyperliquid and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.