XRP Pump Fails to Materialize as Price Crashes 40% From Day's High

XRP has crashed hard from a two-month high reached early Monday, with a planned community buying effort failing to yield desired results.

The cryptocurrency is trading near $0.42 at time of writing – down 40% from the high of $0.75 reached at around 11:10 UTC, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

A coordinated buying effort by some 200,000 members of the two-day-old Telegram group called "Buy & Hold XRP" at 08:30 a.m. ET was supposed to push the cryptocurrency to higher resistance levels. Instead, XRP pulled back from $0.75 to $0.60 ahead of the crowd buying and extended losses to $0.40 after 08:30 a.m. ET.

The cryptocurrency almost doubled in value over the weekend and clocked a two-month high earlier today. The price action suggests some traders bought XRP in anticipation of a price pump, inadvertently pushing it higher. Some of them may now be trapped on the wrong side of the market.

At press time, the exact reason for the price dump is not known. It's quite possible that a whale (large investor) took advantage of the price rise and dumped his holdings. Pump and dump strategies are not new to crypto markets, particularly for XRP.

A Reddit post, which talked about a crowd-buying attack at 08:30 and how it could be successful, has now been removed by Ripple moderators. The Telegram group, however, is still active, where members are blaming exchange downtimes for the price drop.