Stellar Holds 9x More Tokenized Assets Than XRP, Yet XRP’s Market Cap Is 11x Larger
XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) and Stellar have long chased the same vision: moving money and assets across borders without relying on traditional banking infrastructure. XRP remains the heavyweight of the two, with a market capitalization of roughly $66 billion, ranking it among the top 10 cryptocurrencies. Stellar, by contrast, trades at a fraction of that—under $6 billion. Both have fallen significantly from their all-time highs, so neither is winning on price alone.
But the real battleground is tokenization—putting real-world assets like U.S. Treasuries and money-market funds onto a blockchain. And on that front, there's a clear victor: Stellar is not just ahead; it's extending its lead.
The scoreboard most traders watch is price, and there XRP towers over Stellar. At current levels, XRP is worth roughly 11 times more than Stellar—meaning you could buy the entire Stellar network 11 times over and still have change from XRP's market cap.
That lead isn't the result of a recent surge. Both tokens have been sliding amid the broader crypto sell-off; Stellar has dropped about 20% in the past week. XRP's size advantage is solid, but market value only reflects what traders are willing to pay today. It says nothing about which network is actually winning the business both were designed for—and that's where Stellar pulls ahead.
When it comes to tokenized real-world assets, the smaller network is dominant, and it's not close. Stellar now holds roughly $3 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries and money-market funds, while the XRP Ledger holds around $330 million. That's about nine times more tokenized value on Stellar—and the gap is widening. Over the past month, Stellar's tokenized assets grew 21%, while XRP's shrank roughly 18%.
Strangely, the XRP Ledger actually hosts more tokenization projects—302 versus Stellar's 68. But those projects have far fewer holders: just over 150 across the entire XRP ledger, compared to nearly 17,800 on Stellar.
There's also a nuance in that $330 million figure. According to RWA.xyz, the XRP Ledger appears to hold about $3.6 billion in real-world assets on paper—which would beat Stellar. However, most of that value is only recorded on the ledger as a notary. The amount genuinely held and traded on-chain is roughly $330 million; the rest is managed off-chain, with the ledger acting as a record-keeper rather than a live market.
Stellar's $3 billion is the real deal, spread across institutional issuers like Franklin Templeton and Spiko—a platform that alone holds over a billion dollars. Tokenized assets now make up about half of Stellar's total market value, while on the XRP Ledger, the same business accounts for barely half a percent of XRP's market cap. For Stellar, real-world assets are the core reason to own the token; for XRP, they're negligible.
Stellar was built with the unglamorous features big financial institutions actually need. Issuers can freeze or claw back tokens to stay compliant, fees run a fraction of a cent, and settlement finishes in seconds. When WisdomTree—a $100 billion asset manager—explained why it chose Stellar for its tokenized funds, it pointed to exactly those capabilities.
That reputation earned Stellar the biggest prize in the tokenization race. In late May, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC)—the clearinghouse that settles most U.S. stock and bond trades and safeguards about $114 trillion in assets—announced it would put securities like Russell 1000 stocks, major ETFs, and Treasuries directly onto the Stellar network. This marks the first time such securities would live on a public blockchain. Testing runs through 2026, with a wider launch targeted for the first half of 2027.
That doesn't shut XRP out completely. Ripple has wired itself into the DTCC's plumbing from a different angle, through its Ripple Prime arm, which joined the DTCC's clearing group and its tokenization working group. But that's an indirect, back-office connection. Stellar is the network actually issuing the securities—a far bigger deal.
XRP trails on tokenized securities but leads on stablecoins—the digital dollars that handle most settlement work in crypto. The XRP Ledger holds close to a billion dollars in stablecoins, led by Ripple's own RLUSD, which now plugs into Mastercard's settlement network. That's nearly three times Stellar's stablecoin stash, and it's growing the fastest of any major blockchain—up nearly 9% in the past week alone.
That stablecoin strength points to something deeper that XRP has and Stellar doesn't. When a bank uses Ripple's service to send money cross-border, the payment routes through XRP itself, so usage creates demand for the token. Tokenized funds don't work that way. A Franklin Templeton fund can hold hundreds of millions on Stellar without anyone ever needing to touch XLM. That's the difference between assets parked on a network and a token people actually have to use—and it's the edge that matters most for XRP right now.
XRP also has a couple of doors open that Stellar doesn't. Regulated spot XRP ETFs have pulled in about $1.47 billion on U.S. exchanges since launching in late 2025, giving big investors an easy on-ramp Stellar can't yet offer.
Moreover, the CLARITY Act—a bill that would lock in XRP's status as a commodity—has cleared the House and a Senate committee but still awaits a full floor vote. If it passes this year, analysts expect billions in institutional flows as the regulatory overhang lifts.
Stellar has clearly won the tokenization contest, but winning hasn't done much for the XLM price. The token jumped on the DTCC news in late May, ran up toward 29 cents, then gave it all back and now trades lower than before the news broke. All those billions in tokenized assets ride on Stellar's rails, yet the network earns barely a thousand dollars a day in fees from running them. XRP faces a similar dynamic: deal flow grows, partnerships multiply, but the token price stays flat.
For both cryptocurrencies, the ultimate question is whether all that tokenized value ever translates into demand for the tokens. XRP has a head start, since its payment rails pull directly on the token. Stellar's moment will come if the DTCC deal goes live in 2027 and those securities actually start trading and settling on-chain—rather than just being issued and left there. Until then, XRP leads by market cap, Stellar keeps the tokenization crown, and the prices stay stuck.
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