Robinhood Halts Crypto Trading Due to Highly Volatile Market Conditions

Popular trading app Robinhood has temporarily suspended cryptocurrency deposits amid the recent volatility in the crypto market, according to a report today. 

The latest move comes off the 1100% price surge of the popular meme-coin dogecoin ($DOGE), which started as an uncertain “child’s play” asset but has attracted investors’ interest.

Only a few hours earlier, Coinfomania reported that dogecoin increased by $7.17 billion to its market capitalization just within 72 hours. It is bringing the asset’s total market cap to $8.2 billion. Therefore, dogecoin now takes the ninth position among the largest cryptocurrencies.

Aside from the DOGE rally, Bitcoin also recorded more than 20% gains within minutes. The sudden surge is closely related to the change Elon Musk – CEO at Tesla, made on his Twiter bio to #Bitcoin. He also added, “in retrospect, it was inevitable.

With Robinhood temporarily restricting crypto deposits, users can only buy cryptocurrencies on the platform with the funds they already have in their wallets and not with freshly deposited funds.

Commenting on the recent development, a spokesman for Robinhood wrote in an email to CNBC citing the reason for the suspension.

“Due to extraordinary market conditions, we’ve temporarily turned off Instant buying power for crypto,” the spokesman said, noting that users may need to wait for five working days to clear such deposits.

Meanwhile, the trading platform had on Thursday restricted users’ access to regular stocks and GameStop. These shares had experienced volatile price moves earlier in the week because of investors’ rush fueled by the Reddits board WallStreetBet.

In the meantime, Robinhood’s spokesman assures investors that the trading platform is still under full control, stating that: “Customers can still use settled funds to buy crypto. We’ll keep monitoring market conditions and communicating with our customers.”