XRP (XRP +0.18%) isn't worth buying, even though its price will probably rise, perhaps by a lot, over the next five years.

Ripple, the company that issues XRP, has catalysts in its institutional pilots and its RippleNet payment network, but those won't directly help holders get a return. And for investors, value capture for those who commit their capital should be the first box to check when evaluating an investment.

Here's how XRP will fall flat on that front, even if its price climbs significantly.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

XRP isn't currently configured to be a good asset to hold

Ripple initially pitched XRP as a bridge currency for making cross-border payments.

Ripple has since added a few more pitches and now markets the XRP Ledger as an institutional finance hub. It's also now being promoted as a home for financial institutions to manage and perhaps issue tokenized real-world assets, which are things like stocks and bonds which have their ownership data encoded onto a crypto token that's held on a blockchain like the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

All three hypothetical growth avenues imply that the XRPL would see a lot more activity if they play out as envisioned. In particular, over the next five years, the chain's efforts to attract customers in institutional finance and to attract capital in the form of tokenized assets could lead to far more transactions.

More activity on the ledger means that more transaction fees would be incurred, and part of them would be destroyed ("burned") as XRP, shrinking its supply.

But against the $159.9 billion in activity that the network settled in the first half of 2026, it earned $1.2 million in fees along the way, according to asset manager 21Shares -- practically nothing in comparison to XRP's market cap of $82.4 billion. The ledger hosted more than $496 million in tradeable tokenized real-world assets as of Oct. 19, yet their issuers pay the same tiny fees if they transact.

So even dramatic growth in activity over the next five years wouldn't burn a meaningful share of XRP's supply. And there doesn't appear to be anything on Ripple's end that would directly change that dynamic, though there are a couple of proposals still worth knowing about.

The plans on the roadmap won't do much to help

One of two proposals that could be implemented in the next couple of years is a native lending protocol that would allow holders to deposit XRP into vaults that then lend it to borrowers for interest. That interest would pay the lenders for default risk, not for the network's growth, but it would still be a way for XRP holders to monetize their holdings and get a yield.

Another proposal currently under consideration would add native staking, which would reward holders with a yield for locking up their coins to secure the network.

Speculative buying can lift a coin for years, and today's buyers of XRP will probably do fine as a result of that, given that many investors are willing to buy it as it is.

But until there's a new mechanism that reliably links XRP's utilization with the returns enjoyed by holders, I can't imagine investing in it.