Technology
As Dogecoin soars 300 percent, Robinhood restricts crypto trading
This morning, Robinhood began to restrict trading in cryptocurrencies, just as in 24 hours, the price of joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin rose more than 300 percent. CNBC reports that on Friday morning, Robinhood users began noticing instant deposits for cryptocurrencies were no longer working, and the company has confirmed that it has put limits in place.
We have temporarily turned off Instant Buying Power for Crypto due to exceptional market conditions, a Robinhood spokesman told CNBC in a statement. Customers can still purchase crypto using settled funds. We will continue to monitor market conditions and communicate with our clients.
Dogecoin came to life in 2013, a play on bitcoin and the doge meme, from the back of a Twitter joke. Its price began to rise yesterday, and Dogecoin is currently at a market cap of more than $7 billion, thanks to an enormous volume of transactions over the past 24 hours.
Over the past 24 hours, the market activity & restrictions have now made Dogecoin a popular meme among the investors of r/WallStreetBets. Over the past few days, Dogecoin has consistently been spammed on the WallStreetBets Discord server.
Bitcoin is also on the move, up almost 20% in the past 24 hours. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also changed his Twitter profile to include #bitcoin & tweeted “in retrospect, it was inevitable.”
Less than a day after the company moved to limit its users from buying or trading any of the popular Reddit r/WallStreetBets stocks, including GameStop ($GME), AMC ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB), Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY), Nokia ($NOK), and more, Robinhood's latest crypto restrictions come.
It's a move that has been met with widespread criticism, and Google was forced to salvage the one-star rating of Robinhood on the Google Play Store by deleting almost 100,000 negative reviews after the app was bombed by unhappy users. Robinhood says that starting Friday, it will now allow "limited purchases" of stocks such as GameStop.
