On Friday (January 29), Californian FinTech firm Robinhood, which is well-known in the U.S. for its zero-commission trading services, said that it had “temporarily” put restrictions in place for purchases of cryptocurrencies “due to extraordinary market conditions.”
According to a report by CNBC, the users of Robinhood’s mobile app started reporting today that instant deposits for cryptocurrency purchases had been halted, which means that they could only use settled funds in their account to buy crypto.
A Robinhood spokesperson told CNBC via email:
“Due to extraordinary market conditions, we’ve temporarily turned off Instant buying power for crypto… Customers can still use settled funds to buy crypto. We’ll keep monitoring market conditions and communicating with our customers.“
Robinhood’s move comes after huge surges today in the prices of Dogecoin (DOGE) and Bitcoin (BTC), which are currently (as of 13:38 UTC on January 29) up 223.91% and 18.06% (in the past 24-hour period) respectively.
Yesterday, Robinhood angers its users after it “temporarily” halted the ability to buy shares of GameStop (GME) and certain other companies that were the target of Reddit group “WallStreetBets” (WSB).
This was the explanation Robinhood Co-Founder and CEO Vlad Tenev offered on Twitter yesterday:
He then said that Robinood would re-enable on Friday “limited buys of these securities.”
Featured Image by “Seaq68” via Pixabay.com
