Dogecoin mania leads to Robinhood crypto order failures

A surge in popularity for Dogecoin was behind a temporary shutdown of Robinhood's crypto trading platform on Thursday night.

The cryptocurrency, a fork of Litecoin that was created as a joke and is named after a popular meme featuring a Shiba Inu, has witnessed significant price increases over the last few days. According to a blog post published Friday, one of Robinhood's systems failed after the price of Dogecoin went past $0.25  on Thursday evening. That caused the crypto order system to also temporarily shut down.

According to the post, the system was back online in about an hour, though some customers continued to encounter issues trading.  The platform was fully back to normal after two hours, according to the post. 

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The price of Dogecoin increased to nearly $0.50 on Friday morning, which again led to problems for some customers who were trying to place crypto orders. 

"These interruptions aren’t acceptable to us," the Robinhood team wrote in the blog post. "Our teams are working around the clock to provide you with the highest level of service possible, and as interest in crypto continues over the weekend, we may continue to see intermittent service interruptions."

 At press time, DOGE is trading at $0.35. 

About Author

Saniya More (pronounced: Saan-ya Mo-ray) is a quadrilingual journalist at The Block. She got her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and did her undergraduate degree at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. Her work has appeared in CBS News, Bangkok Post, Thai Enquirer, Globalists, Byline Times and other publications. When she’s not chasing a story, you will most likely find her biking, tweeting, taking photos or creating Spotify playlists for every occasion.