Dogecoin, the dog meme-based cryptocurrency, has had its own meteoric rise along with retail stocks like AMC Theaters and GameStop in 2021. And on Thursday, that rise went from a pipe dream to the crypto being worth some serious money. Especially for investors who got in when it was largely worth nothing.
via: Complex
Some Internet users are “much upset” after they had trouble trading Dogecoin on Robinhood following what the company is calling a Thursday night system failure.
The cryptocurrency— which was born out of an Internet meme in 2013 and has since been backed by Tesla CEO and meme-curator Elon Musk — has surged to an all-time high this week with it growing past 25 cents Thursday night. In a Friday blog post, Robinhood said that “one of our systems failed, which brought down our crypto order system” while it was processing orders. The post labeled the interruption as “not acceptable.”
“The system was recovered in about an hour, meaning customers could trade with some intermittent issues,” the company wrote. “We were back to normal within two hours. On Friday morning, we saw a similar spike in activity as Dogecoin rose to nearly 50 cents. For Robinhood this led to sporadic crypto order failures and delayed notifications for some customers.”
According to CoinMarketCap, Dogecoin is now up 468% since last Friday and over 6,000% since the begininning of 2020.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Robinhood has been at the center of user concerns with its infamous preventative measures toward users trying to purchase Gamestop stocks in January, earning the company backlash from politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz. Ice Cube also wasn’t too thrilled with the company earlier this year when it used his image in a blog post, later reportedly deciding to sue.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2021
At the end of Friday’s blog post, Robinhood warned users that they “may continue to see intermittent service interruptions.”
All of this, of course, has more traditional investors worried about a potential cryptocurrency bubble. It’s important to note, of course, that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that were all the rage a few weeks ago have already seen pretty precipitous drops in value. But it’s all fun and games until the global economy crashes
