What's the best-performing S&P 500 stock so far in 2025? There's no contest. Palantir Technologies (PLTR 4.30%) has trounced all other contenders with a year-to-date gain of over 140%.
There isn't an equivalent of the S&P 500 for cryptocurrencies. However, among digital currencies with a market cap of at least $100 billion, XRP (XRP 1.86%) (sometimes referred to as Ripple, which is the name of the company that popularized the cryptocurrency) is the clear winner with a year-to-date gain of around 60%.
Stocks and cryptocurrencies are vastly different, yet they vie for the same pool of investors' hard-earned cash. Which is the better choice for investing $10,000 right now: Palantir or XRP?
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The case for Palantir
Palantir describes what it does as making "products for human-driven analysis of real-world data." However, those products rely heavily on artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and generative AI. The company's initial focus was on providing software to governments (particularly intelligence and defense agencies), but it has expanded into commercial applications as well.
Both of Palantir's core markets are booming. The company's U.S. commercial revenue skyrocketed 93% year over year in the second quarter of 2025 to $306 million. Its U.S. government revenue soared 53% year over year to $426 million. Palantir's overall revenue jumped 48% to a little over $1 billion.
NASDAQ: PLTR
Key Data Points
CEO Alex Karp wrote to shareholders recently that this growth rate is "nearly without precedent or comparison" for a business of Palantir's scale. He also stated, "This is still only the beginning of something much larger and, we believe, even more significant." He could be right. IDC projects that the global AI platform software market will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 40.6% through 2028 to $153 billion.
Palantir outshines every software maker in the world with at least $1 billion in trailing-12-month revenue on the "Rule of 40" metric. This number combines a company's revenue growth and its profit margin. Palantir's "Rule of 40" score is 94%. Among the 25 global companies with the largest market caps, only Nvidia has a higher score.
The case for XRP
David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto set out in 2011 to develop a digital asset that was specifically designed for payments and would be better than Bitcoin. They wound up creating the XRP Ledger, which uses XRP as its native currency. The three engineers launched a company to expand the blockchain platform they developed. After a couple of name changes, this company became Ripple.
Today, XRP ranks as the third-largest cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of over $180 billion. It's traded on more than 100 markets and exchanges. Roughly 59.3 billion XRP tokens are in circulation, with a total supply of nearly 100 billion tokens.
CRYPTO: XRP
Key Data Points
XRP's growth prospects hinge on demand for the cryptocurrency outstripping supply. That hasn't been a problem so far -- and might not be going forward, either. For one thing, its developers' goal of building a better version of Bitcoin appears to have been achieved. XRP takes only three to five seconds to settle a payment, compared with 500 seconds for Bitcoin. It also boasts a much lower cost per transaction, is much more scalable, and consumes much less energy than Bitcoin.
Demand could also soar thanks to President Trump's recently signed executive order directing the U.S. government to take steps to allow 401(k) plan investments in alternative assets, including cryptocurrencies. In addition, several investment management companies are scrambling to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that own XRP.
And the verdict is...
Which of these assets is the better alternative for investing $10,000 right now? I think it depends on your risk tolerance and investment horizon.
Both XRP and Palantir are risky. Like any cryptocurrency, XRP is only worth what investors think it's worth. Some would argue that it has no intrinsic value (although that's debatable). Palantir's risk level primarily comes from its valuation: The stock trades at 294 times forward earnings -- a nosebleed level. However, because of the company's growth prospects, I'd say it's less risky than XRP overall.
That said, it wouldn't surprise me if XRP outperforms Palantir over the short term. The creation of new ETFs focusing on the cryptocurrency and the likelihood that investors will soon be able to buy those ETFs and perhaps buy XRP directly in their 401(k) accounts could provide major catalysts.
What about over the long term? I think the nod goes to Palantir. The potential for AI to transform governments and businesses is massive. Still, other stocks offer better risk-reward propositions than Palantir, in my view.
