I find it impossible to compare real estate and cryptocurrencies, as very different financial fields. In any way, if I had to choose one of them
in my current country, I can't. I would divide the money to invest today here and tomorrow there.
About specifically real estate, the risk rate strongly depends on the country we live in. I couldn't really affirm that real estate is free of risk, as in my former country real estate is a complete disaster: plenty of unsold properties at the point properties turned hard burdens to landlords, encumbered with unpayable debts and taxes. At the point landlords are selling their property for a mere symbolic price (one of my best friends told me in the south of Italy where he lives, people is selling apartments for the ridiculous amount of 1000 euros to set free from tons of taxes and maintenance duties

). And to rent to earn, quite impossible, as the majority of renters in south Europe don't actually pay the rent, whether cause the loss of their jobs, whether they are simply cheaters. So buying an apartment to rent it carries on tons of risks. As the real estate sector faces a big crisis since the nineties, in such countries I maybe wouldn't engage nor into real estate stocks.
My current country faces the matter of unsold properties too, but until now not the large-scale
plague of defaulted renters. So it's still lucrative to invest in real estate to rent or to simply buy real estate stocks.