Robinhood Denies Restricting Dogecoin Trading

Robinhood, the stock trading app, has denied placing restrictions on Dogecoin trades after some users reported seeing pending message displays when trying to make the cryptocurrency trades.

The Twitter account @Breaking911 tweeted late Thursday: "Robinhood users report that the platform is restricting Dogecoin trades." The tweet received over 3,000 likes and 1,400 retweets since it was first shared.

In a reply to that post, Robinhood tweeted early Friday: "No, we didn't place restrictions on $DOGE trading. This is false information. For latest operational updates, check http://status.robinhood.com."

In a tweet late Thursday, Robinhood stated: "We know some customers may have seen executed crypto orders display as 'pending' for an extended period of time. We were experiencing a delay in order status updates—this is now resolved. Check your app for up-to-date information about any recent orders."

In another tweet Friday, the company stated: "Update: Crypto trading is now fully restored. Like others, we were experiencing unprecedented demand for Robinhood Crypto services, which created issues with crypto trading. We've resolved the issue and apologize for the inconvenience."

The status update page at the Robinhood website currently states: "All systems operational."

In a tweet Thursday posted around 10 p.m. ET, the stock trading app reported it was "experiencing issues with crypto trading. We're working to resolve this as soon as possible."

In a reply, user @Vchip1018 shared a screenshot of a Robinhood account showing an error message. The user tweeted: "Just because ppl rely on your app to trade doesn't mean you guys will take advantage. Either shut down the app or keep it functional especially with amount of money you make." The post received over 400 likes as of Friday morning.

User @yuhzername also replied to Robinhood's tweet, writing: "I have been trying to cancel a limit sell for 1 hour. I'm trying to sell 100,000 worth of Doge but it keeps giving an error. Please wth robinhood. This is not ok I need to speak with someone immediately. I have videos of me trying. WiFi, cellular data, re-downloading app please." The post received nearly 300 likes.

In another reply, user @JenninNYC also tweeted a screenshot of the user's Robinhood account and wrote: "Are you going to cover my account?!? This is a technical error, not my own risk. Ive been trying to execute this transaction for almost two hours! None of my crypto comes up!" The tweet received nearly 200 likes.

Around an hour later, Robinhood tweeted that cryptocurrency trading had been "partially restored" and that it was "working toward restoring and maintaining full functionality."

About 30 minutes later, the company tweeted that cryptocurrency trading was "now fully restored."

Dogecoin, which began as a joke when it was launched back in 2013, has seen a price surge in recent months. It reached a record high on Thursday, the price of a single dogecoin surpassing 20 cents for the first time.

The meme cryptocurrency's rise came after the value of video game retailer GameStop stocks soared, fueled by investments from users on the subreddit group WallStreetBets.

The GameStop price hike inspired members of the subreddit group SatoshiStreetBets—which describes itself as "the crypto version of WallStreetBets"—to attempt to do the same for Dogecoin.

Dogecoin's price rise also came after the stock trading app Robinhood restricted its users from trading GameStop stocks.