Crypto investors face a choice today between chasing fickle investor sentiment that leads to a surge in Dogecoin (DOGE 12.02%) or the steady progress of building real use cases for XRP (XRP 7.77%).

So which of these two is more likely to double its price and actually stay there?

Dogecoin might pop first, but can it maintain altitude?

At $0.21 per coin and a $31.4 billion market cap as of July 16, a doubling for Dogecoin demands only a move to $0.42, giving it a market cap of about $60 billion.

That is a modest absolute change for a token that once sprinted to $0.72 in 2021. The meme coin's twin fuels are global liquidity and social media buzz, and both can flare quickly under the right conditions. After all, in late 2024 Dogecoin experienced a sharp climb that had many investors anticipating a repeat of the 2021 run. It didn't happen, but the price still rose by quite a bit before crashing.

Sentiment has thus been fragile since early 2025. Fundamentally, little has changed under the hood. There isn't much of any development activity happening with the coin, and there is not any reason to expect that to change. Dogecoin isn't about to gain utility that it didn't have before.

Three investors sit around a coffee table and discuss some papers in an office.

Image source: Getty Images.

Without an expanding feature set, Dogecoin struggles to anchor new users when the meme tide recedes. There's simply no reason to keep capital around when there's probably a better horse elsewhere.

Historically, each sharp Dogecoin rally is followed by a near-equal retracement within weeks, erasing gains and disappointing late entrants. Assuming liquidity loosens throughout this year and next year as anticipated, Dogecoin could still quickly double, but holding that line for a quarter or more would require the very utility it lacks.

XRP's utility engine makes a sustained double far likelier

Today, XRP changes hands for about $3.05 with a $181 billion market cap.

A doubling to $6.10 or so looks heavier than Dogecoin's task, as it would require a market cap of $610 billion. Nonetheless, XRP brings structural advantages that make the increase more likely.

Ripple, the business that issues XRP, unveiled a new platform for tokenized U.S. Treasuries on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) alongside upgraded compliance rails aimed squarely at institutional investors. The chain is catering more and more to the very needs and desires of those investors, which is why they're interested in using it to manage their assets on-chain. On that note, real-world asset (RWA) flows onto the XRPL are small today but could amount to trillions of dollars during the next decade, as XRPL is positioning itself as the venue of choice for monetary transfers.

In the same vein, Ripple just launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin integrated with fiat currency rails so as to simplify cross-border payouts and help users avoid currency exchange fees -- one of the core purposes of the chain. This also builds on the rebranded Ripple Payments solution, which lets banks settle transactions without pre-funding foreign accounts like they would have to do if they used slower and more expensive legacy technologies like SWIFT.

Therefore, XRP's path to a durable doubling in value looks less like a speculative moonshot and more like a steady climb aided by growing cash flows, bank integrations, and regulatory tailwinds.

The token may not leap to a doubling first -- anything is possible with Dogecoin -- but the real business activity backing its price should keep gravity from reclaiming the achievement, unlike with the meme coin. Thus, investors seeking more than fireworks are almost certainly better off buying XRP now and enjoying the compounding effect of real demand over time rather than buying Dogecoin and hoping for the best.