Robinhood goes bust just as Dogecoin goes boom

Chris Morris
·2 min read
26

Trading app Robinhood, which famously went down during the peak of the market frenzy last March, suffered another outage Tuesday. Only this time, it wasn’t stocks that were stuck in neutral, it was crypto.

The outage, lasting around one hour, took place as Dogecoin explored new record highs and Ethereum continued to gain ground. The individual investors who make up a sizable percentage of Robinhood’s customer base were outraged.

And since so many were upset about losing the chance to make money on a digital currency that’s centered around a meme, they voiced their frustration using other memes.

https://twitter.com/was9pride/status/1389588327901261828

https://twitter.com/kingdaved/status/1389576656973615105

https://twitter.com/TRICHERATOPS_/status/1389581557980139527

Others were more direct with their criticisms, noting that the crypto’s rise stopped right about the same time Robinhood went down. And some saw the outage as an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to their investment.

https://twitter.com/fatassjoint/status/1389592596062765058

https://twitter.com/apatel2210/status/1389590431487324161

https://twitter.com/gsg_tick/status/1389576508407173124

https://twitter.com/AyKopOfficial/status/1389587820772302849

https://twitter.com/MattM3RCY/status/1389587991425961986

At 11:15 a.m. ET, Robinhood said that crypto trading had been restored and apologized, adding that it would “continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Traders hoping to take advantage of the Dogecoin run lost their chance at the highest of the highs, though. After being up 49% at one point Tuesday, the crypto’s gains slipped to 30% at noon ET.

Last March, Robinhood was down for the better part of two days as the market saw tremendous gains. (The value of all companies on the S&P 500 jumped by $1.1 trillion dollars during the outage.) At the time, the company blamed “unprecedented load” for the problems. Customers were outraged at not being able to take advantage of the trading opportunities, and did not find the company’s offer of billing credits and other options as a make-good.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com