XRP falls sharply after soaring 50% but Dogecoin is holding on, with day traders looking for new targets and Elon Musk fanning interest | Currency News | Financial and Business News

Cryptocurrency XRP tumbled into the red on Monday, after rising more than 50% in early trading, as a “pump and hold” scheme organized by day traders ran into trouble.

Yet “meme” currency Dogecoin held on gains of around 34% as amateur investors zeroed in on new assets in the wake of the GameStop saga and Elon Musk boosted interest in cryptocurrencies.

XRP was down 7.14% to $0.43779 by 9.50am ET. It had risen more than 50% to above $0.74 in early morning trading.

Dogecoin was 33.87% higher at $0.04007, but remained well below a high of more than $0.07 hit last week. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, was up 0.56% to $33,548.

Last week, day traders on the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets sent the shares of video-game store GameStop soaring.

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The army of amateur investors appeared to have locked on to a broader array of targets on Monday, with silver hitting its highest level in 8 years and XRP and Dogecoin both jumping.

XRP is both a cryptocurrency and digital payments network created by US firm Ripple, which stumbled last year after the firm ran into legal trouble. It denies allegations of wrongdoing.

Dogecoin is a “meme” cryptocurrency created in 2013, seemingly as a joke, but which has picked up a growing following. A cryptocurrency is a secure digital currency, often without a central controlling authority.

Tesla founder Elon Musk has encouraged the recent surge in interest in cryptocurrencies. In a Sunday night video on the app Clubhouse, Musk said it would be funny if “Dogecoin becomes the currency of Earth in the future.”

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Part of the early-morning XRP price rise was driven by a concerted effort among the currency’s fans, echoing the GameStop phenomenon. A group on the messaging app Telegram called Buy & Hold XRP hit the maximum 200,000 member threshold.

Yet the strategy looked shaky shortly after 7am ET, as the price stumbled. One popular post on the XRP channel on the social network Reddit said: “Stop panic selling!! We can do this! We just had it to .74 USD, let it rise!”

Another Reddit user posted: “People that sell now are the ones that are going to be the most disappointed! HOLD.”