Despite all the turbulence in the stock market so far this year, both the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.78%) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.61%) have managed to notch record highs in recent trading sessions. While such indicators speak to the resiliency of investing in stocks, other asset classes have performed quite well throughout 2025, too.

In particular, 2025 has been a great year for cryptocurrency investors. Bitcoin is hovering near all-time highs, as are crypto-adjacent stocks such as Coinbase and Robinhood.

With crypto adoption on the rise, some investors are likely looking beyond the usual suspects and considering positions in less mainstream opportunities such as XRP (XRP -10.09%) or Dogecoin (DOGE -8.53%).

Let's explore the investment prospects of XRP and Dogecoin and assess which cryptocurrency is the better buy. Although both are emerging as popular names in the cryptocurrency realm, the analysis below will help show why there is a clear winner between XRP and Dogecoin in the long run.

What investors need to know about investing in XRP

Today, businesses, governments, and large financial institutions typically use the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system to bridge foreign transactions. Despite its popularity, though, SWIFT transactions can take days to settle and come with significant fees.

In an effort to improve this time-consuming and expensive process, a fintech company called Ripple created an alternative payments network to help settle transactions at much faster speeds (in seconds) and lower fees compared to SWIFT and other legacy payments infrastructure providers. XRP is a bridge currency offered through Ripple's payment network.

Disrupting how money travels across borders is an enormous opportunity. For this reason, it's easy to understand why investors are so excited about XRP's potential. Nevertheless, there are some important nuances to understand about XRP before investing.

First, Ripple's adoption pales in comparison to SWIFT's. Today, there are more than 11,000 institutions across more than 200 countries relying on the SWIFT network. Although estimates vary, industry research suggests that Ripple has been adopted by somewhere between 200 to 300 institutions across 50 countries.

Another crucial idea to understand is that adoption of Ripple's payment network does not directly translate into growth for XRP. Institutions can readily make transfers of fiat currencies on Ripple's network without using XRP, meaning they don't need to purchase it.

Image source: Getty Images.

What investors need to know about investing in Dogecoin

Dogecoin is an entirely different animal from XRP. Unlike XRP, Dogecoin is a meme coin. In essence, Dogecoin does not carry any underlying utility in the way Bitcoin, XRP, or Ethereum do.

Like other meme-related assets, Dogecoin's price is largely tied to narratives that often do not come to fruition. Most recently, Dogecoin witnessed outsized buying activity shortly after the reelection of Donald Trump as president last November.

More specifically, some investors saw the Trump administration's creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as some sort of endorsement for Dogecoin given their identical acronyms (Dogecoin trades under the ticker symbol DOGE).

Spoiler alert: The Department of Government Efficiency is entirely independent of Dogecoin. Furthermore, despite this administration's supportive rhetoric around the crypto industry, Dogecoin has not been a direct beneficiary of new pro-crypto legislation.

What's the verdict?

When it comes to assessing whether XRP or Dogecoin is the better investment, XRP is the clear winner in my book. Unlike Dogecoin, XRP is actually playing a role -- albeit a small one at the moment -- in redefining the payments industry.

COIN Market Cap data by YCharts.

As of the closing bell on July 18, XRP boasted a market capitalization of $203 billion. That is double the size of Coinbase, and considerably bigger than other leading, diversified fintech platforms such as SoFi, Circle Internet Group, Robinhood, and PayPal.

In my eyes, a lot of the upside is already priced into XRP, and the cryptocurrency has gotten caught up in a momentum trade. While I see XRP as the superior choice over Dogecoin, I do not necessarily see it as a sound buy right now.