Better Cryptocurrency to Buy Now With $4,000: XRP (Ripple) vs. Dogecoin

By Alex Carchidi – Dec 17, 2025 at 4:15AM ESTKey PointsXRP is being developed for a handful of specific use cases in finance.Dogecoin isn't really being developed for anything, nor was it ever. Both coins just got included in an ETF for the first time. These 10 Stocks Could Mint the Next Wave of Millionaires ›CRYPTO: XRPXRPMarket Cap$115BToday's Changeangle-down(1.26%) $0.02Current Price$1.90Price as of December 17, 2025 at 4:44 AM ETOne of these coins is a meme, and the other is a compelling work in progress.Believe it or not, there are some investors out there who would say that both XRP (XRP +1.26%) and Dogecoin (DOGE +0.67%) are both meme coins. In practice, that claim simply isn't true, but the chatter certainly helps to muddy the waters when it comes to practical questions like where to place a $4,000 investment of your hard-earned money. Which of these cryptos warrants investment, and under what conditions? Let's dive in and address those questions. Image source: Getty Images. XRP offers a few ways for demand to show up XRP is the native coin of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which was created by Ripple, and which aims to settle transactions in about three to five seconds in exchange for practically zero fees. From the get-go, Ripple has marketed the XRPL to financial businesses, as they're extremely likely to be using money transfer technology that's dramatically slower and vastly more expensive. In theory, those customers could use the coin for things like cross-border remittance payments, merchant transaction settlement, and regulatory compliance-centered payment acceptance, alongside other features like enabling stablecoin-based money flows. The chain itself is also currently used to manage tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), such as stocks and bonds, with more than $212 million in such assets currently parked on the network and available for trading today. ExpandCRYPTO: XRPXRPToday's Change(1.26%) $0.02Current Price$1.90Key Data PointsMarket Cap$115BDay's Range$1.88 - $1.9452wk Range$1.65 - $3.65Volume2.7B Ripple also keeps pushing the stack of services it offers into the world of regulated finance. In April 2025, Ripple announced a roughly $1.2 billion deal to buy the prime broker Hidden Road, and it also recently launched the Ripple USD stablecoin. The end goal appears to be offering a full suite of services targeted at financial institutions and institutional investors, such that the path of least resistance for them to modernize their workflows is to transition them to the XRPL. If that works, users will bring in a flood of new capital to the network, and they will be required to buy a fair amount of XRP to take advantage of its capabilities along the way, which will force the price up.Advertisement In sum, XRP is a financial tool that's being actively developed and marketed by a business that has already seen a good amount of success in building up its set of products and services to appeal to its target customers. Dogecoin has cultural momentum, but no value capture You probably know Dogecoin as the first dog-themed cryptocurrency that also has a habit of going to the moon when the market conditions are extremely frothy. Dogecoin's community is real, and it's unusually good at keeping the coin in the public conversation even over the course of years. Plus, with the recent approval of Dogecoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which, for the record, XRP has too, there's now an easier way than ever before for investors to allocate capital to the coin. ExpandCRYPTO: DOGEDogecoinToday's Change(0.67%) $0.00Current Price$0.13Key Data PointsMarket Cap$20BDay's Range$0.13 - $0.1352wk Range$0.13 - $0.43Volume954M The issue is that having a decent community and an open door to new capital inflows does not necessarily create the conditions for higher prices, as the coin completely lacks any mechanism for retaining capital. Dogecoin has no fixed supply cap, so its supply increases indefinitely on a regular schedule, diluting those who hold. In other words, the coin need a growing demand just to see its value stand still. In contrast to a network like XRP that can plausibly earn usage because it solves a costly business problem, Dogecoin mostly needs another wave of attention before its price will go up. And attention behaves like the weather, which means it can move on just as easily (and as unpredictably) as it arrived. There isn't a valid investment thesis for buying this asset. So, the decisive answer here is that XRP deserves your investment of $4,000, and that Dogecoin most certainly does not. Of course, there are risks involved with buying XRP, and there's no guarantee its price will actually go up over time -- but Ripple has a big interest in making its price rise, and where there's a will, there's a way. The same can't be said of Dogecoin.About the AuthorAlex Carchidi is a contributing Motley Fool healthcare and cryptocurrency analyst covering biotech, pharma, cannabis, and digital asset companies. Previously, Alex was a bench scientist and science writer at several biopharma companies and began his career as a researcher at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Boston University and a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.TMFacarchidiX@alexcarchidiRead NextDec 14, 2025 •By Adam SpataccoIs XRP a Buy Heading Into 2026?Dec 13, 2025 •By Alex CarchidiRiskier Cryptocurrency to Buy Right Now: XRP vs. CardanoDec 13, 2025 •By Chris NeigerIs XRP (Ripple) a Millionaire Maker?Dec 11, 2025 •By Dominic BasultoThe Best Cryptocurrency to Buy With $100 Right NowDec 10, 2025 •By Leo SunWhere Will XRP Be in 3 Years?Dec 10, 2025 •By Alex CarchidiBetter Cryptocurrency to Buy Now With $2,500: XRP (Ripple) vs. Cardano