Business Analysis
Yesterday and today, the enthusiasm for joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin overwhelmed Robinhood, leading to “sporadic crypto order failures and delayed notifications for some customers,” Robinhood wrote in a blog post.
“These interruptions aren’t acceptable to us,” Robinhood wrote in its post. “We believe we’re the most intuitive crypto platform for Dogecoin traders and we’re proud to be a top choice for this community.”
Robinhood has a history of exactly this kind of whoopsie. In March 2020, there were three huge outages which Robinhood has said were due to “stress on our infrastructure.” And infamously, in January, Robinhood limited trades on GameStop, pissing off the entire internet and getting itself hauled in front of Congress in the...
Oh, super, Dogecoin is spiking. The joke currency, which as recently as January 27th was worth less than a cent, hit 47 cents this morning, according to Robinhood’s tracker. As I type this, the market cap is more than $51 billion.
The currency is based on an au-courant-as-of-2013 meme of a Shiba Inu, and was intended to satirize bitcoin. Well, kids, the joke’s over. It’s now a top-10 cryptocurrency.
Weird year for finance, honestly. There was the Gamestonk thing which made GameStop stock so valuable, a member of the board of directors had to step down so that he could sell shares without restrictions. (Noted investor David Einhorn accused Elon Musk of pouring “jet fuel” on the January rally; a hedge fund called the top of the January...