XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) and Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) have plenty of catalysts to support their future growth, and it’s common knowledge that financial institutions around the world are adopting both coins for various reasons. But there’s one new trend in particular that’s driving those same financial institutions to take more interest in these two coins.
The trend might take years to play out, if it continues at all. For investors, that part could be great news, as it could lead to a new era of upwardly mobile prices borne from millions of people getting real utility from both coins. Here’s what you need to know.
People trading in crypto know that Bitcoin and XRP are blockchains, and that the coins that live on those chains are associated with a myriad number of different wallet addresses. One person could have many wallets, or only one, just like they could have vast holdings of the tokens, or only a small pile.
When Bitcoin was first invented, tokens were fungible. Put differently, every token was identical to every other token, except for the address where it resided — just like the dollar bills in your physical wallet right now.
Since then, upgrades have been made to the Bitcoin chain so that coins can include metadata that inscribes additional information. That’s one of the ways that the chain can now be used to mint, send, and hold non-fungible tokens (NFTs). So far, many of the NFTs minted on the coin’s chain are decidedly non-serious memes rather than anything that’s useful in a financial sense or otherwise investable.
XRP has a similar capability. What’s the point of a coin like XRP that’s intended for serious financial applications, specifically reducing fees associated with international money transfers, having such a function? The chain isn’t compatible with swapping images of meme coins or other more traditional uses of NFTs on other chains.
In short, this functionality opens the door to tracking real world assets (RWA) like properties, commodities, stocks, art, bonds, cars, and more, all on the blockchain. An NFT could contain the legal rights to a property provided that the holder could prove that they control the wallet address where the NFT resides. And that’s exactly what’s happening more and more on XRP and to a lesser extent on Bitcoin.
The push to track RWAs on various blockchains is just starting. As of early 2025, an estimated $7.6 billion worth of hard assets were tracked across the cryptocurrency sector. Some of the headier estimates for the growth of such tokenized assets see the total value tracked on blockchains to surpass $30 trillion by 2030.
Moving forward, at least some subset of investors looking to create a traceable record of their assets are going to use XRP or Bitcoin. In the long run, that could bring billions of dollars in value to both chains, pushing their price skyward in the process.
As appealing as RWA tokenization may seem right now, there isn’t any reason to rush to buy either XRP or Bitcoin on the basis of this trend alone, at least not yet.
They aren’t the only two chains in the running for tracking the world’s assets. Many others have the same capabilities, and there is no guarantee that either of these two will win the fight for market share. In fact, because of how difficult it is to update Bitcoin, it’s better to bet against its becoming the chain for tracking real world assets.
XRP may have a better chance, as it’s being actively developed, and it’s already in use by international banks for the purpose of processing money transfers. It wouldn’t be too difficult for those financial institutions to tokenize the assets they control using XRP, and it’d likely be a lot cheaper and faster than trying to do the same with Bitcoin.
But it’s unclear how much demand for XRP those efforts would actually generate at this early stage. Keep in mind that XRP’s network charges fees that are a fraction of a penny for each transfer that occurs using the coin; there’s simply no way that transferring assets could ever produce much in the way of revenue unless the transactions were priced differently.
Overall, the takeaway here for investors is that there may be a big addition to the investment thesis for both of these cryptocurrencies over the next few years if the RWA tokenization trend really takes off. Keep an eye on how much the major financial institutions buy into the idea. If it seems like they’re all in, and if they choose either Bitcoin or XRP to be the tool for implementing the tokenization process, it’ll be a strong buy signal.
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Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
1 new Trend That Could Drive XRP and Bitcoin Higher and Higher was originally published by The Motley Fool
