LINK's massive tailwind may outperform XRP; which one is more suitable for a long-term investment portfolio?

Ripple (XRP) is favored by organizations with substantial capital, and Chainlink (LINK) may soon experience the same significant tailwind. When it comes to becoming a millionaire with minimal holdings, these two coins are unlikely to achieve that, but disciplined investment in XRP could still significantly enhance your portfolio in the coming years.

XRP has performed well recently

XRP is currently reported at 3.54 USD in the European morning session today (21), with a market capitalization close to 200 billion USD.

If it rises 10 times now, its value will soar to 2 trillion dollars, on par with Bitcoin. This is not impossible, but it requires a large influx of new capital. Of course, by then, even if you invest 10,000 dollars, it won't make you a millionaire.

But even if this type of currency cannot make investors millions of dollars, the chances of investors becoming richer are still very high.

The advantage of XRP lies in its appeal to institutional investors (its target audience) and the support of its issuing company, Ripple.

These investors are looking for a cheap and fast asset management solution, not to mention earning yields on stablecoin holdings and obtaining liquidity from lending institutions. XRP meets all these needs. It also helps banks and institutional currency traders avoid the exchange fees and transfer costs associated with using traditional technologies.

Ripple's technical strategy is to integrate regulatory compliance tools directly into the XRP protocol, making it more suitable for banks and institutional investors that require highly streamlined solutions.

As long as there are asset holders with large amounts of capital not on the blockchain, XRP has potential users and a capital pool available for expansion. If Ripple can continue to perfectly match its technology with user needs, this is likely to drive significant growth in the coming years.

The growth story of LINK is taking off

XRP is essentially a financial technology aimed at institutions, while Chainlink's scope is more limited.

Its positioning is to become middleware that provides data sources ("oracles"), enabling communication between blockchains and with traditional finance. It is a platform that allows blockchain application developers to integrate information such as stock prices into smart contracts designed to run on-chain, as well as many other possible implementations.

The trading price of LINK is approximately 17 dollars, with a market capitalization exceeding 11 billion dollars. A 10-fold increase would only require an additional market investment of 100 billion dollars, which is much easier than the funds needed for a similar increase in XRP. However, such a scale of increase will not make investors millionaires.

Since the value of Chainlink is accumulated through the use of its oracle data streams, its advantages are closely related to the widespread application of tokenization and decentralized applications (dApp). If asset management firms continue to adopt Chainlink's data oracles as part of their technology stack, Chainlink can charge fees from trillions of dollars in capital flows, thus achieving significant growth in the process.

Therefore, Chainlink's expansion rate may exceed that of XRP, as it can leverage the influx of funds brought by the XRP user base to sell its oracle platform to XRP.

The problem here is that the demand is more indirect.

In theory, banks do not need to buy and hold a large amount of Bitcoin to pay for oracle service fees. Therefore, the price increase depends on whether its staking economic mechanism and fee acquisition mechanism can operate as designed, as well as whether its scale continues to grow. Over time, the emergence of competitors will inevitably make this process more difficult.

For investors who can withstand volatility and have a longer investment horizon, Chainlink provides opportunities for excess returns, but the road is not smooth.

XRP and LINK, which is more suitable for an investment portfolio?

According to The Motley Fool, if the goal is to achieve the highest probability of stable returns in the coming years, then XRP will have the upper hand due to its expanding institutional momentum, which offers a more direct upside advantage.

The chain can thrive without attracting 100% of institutional capital into the crypto space, and it can reliably deliver substantial returns, even if it may not make anyone a millionaire.

If you can withstand uncertainty, then if the argument for purchasing XRP is proven correct, and large banks and other major capital holders transfer most of their wealth onto the Chainlink network, Chainlink could outperform XRP. The services provided by these two coins are complementary, so both could be good investment options.

Once again, when it comes to becoming a millionaire by holding a small amount of coins, it is unlikely that both of these coins will achieve that. However, disciplined investment in XRP may still significantly enhance your portfolio in the coming years, and Chainlink is also a good option.