"How Bad Was the Rush?" Giving Up on Buying Dogecoin Due to Robinhood Outage [Experience]

Dogecoin Emerges as 'National Coin' with Surging US Individual Buying
Trading on Robinhood but Purchase Blocked Due to System Glitch
Coinbase Does Not Support Trading

A meme created by an individual investor encouraging the purchase of Dogecoin.

[Asia Economy New York=Correspondent Baek Jong-min] On the morning of the 4th (local time), I checked the cryptocurrency prices and saw that Dogecoin had surged by 50%. I hurriedly opened the Robinhood app. I confirmed that there was $30 in Robinhood and tried to buy. Dogecoin, which was about 5 cents a month ago, had now jumped to the 50-cent range. Curious about why it was rising, I thought I should buy it now. I thought I could make enough for a hamburger in just a few hours if things went well.

It was a misconception. Reality was different. In the end, I couldn't buy it. Trading was suspended because too many investors rushed in.

Robinhood app sent a notification that Dogecoin trading is not available.

Only Robinhood sells it but server issues occurred... purchase impossible

The moment I accessed Robinhood and selected Dogecoin, a message popped up on my smartphone screen saying, "A server issue has occurred. Please try again later."

This was a recurrence of the problem that happened last January when GameStop stock trading surged. I had no choice but to give up buying Dogecoin. Dogecoin, which was 54 cents at the time, soared to as high as 70 cents that day.

I was not the only one who had difficulty buying Dogecoin that day. According to the technology news outlet The Verge, problems with Robinhood's cryptocurrency trading started at 9:30 a.m. that day.

I looked for other exchanges. As expected, Dogecoin was not available for trading on 'WeBull,' another free stock trading app.

Robinhood announced that trading of cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin had been normalized, but trading remained unavailable for a certain period afterward.

I turned my eyes to cryptocurrency exchanges rather than stock trading apps. It was Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange recently listed on the Nasdaq market. After downloading the app and going through the registration process, the conclusion was still no trading. Coinbase was not trading Dogecoin. The reality was that even at the largest U.S. exchange, Dogecoin could not be bought.

I considered other options. I remembered that PayPal had recently started cryptocurrency trading. When I opened the PayPal app, I saw Bitcoin. I checked if Dogecoin was available, but it was not.

I understood why individual investors in the U.S. trade Dogecoin through Robinhood.

Because Dogecoin trading was concentrated on Robinhood, many investors who could not trade in time expressed dissatisfaction. Robinhood also does not allow transfers to other cryptocurrency wallets. This means that cryptocurrencies bought on Robinhood must be sold only within Robinhood.

Last January, when Robinhood restricted trading as the stock prices of GameStop, AMC, and other stocks mainly traded by individuals surged and trading volume skyrocketed, it triggered investor dissatisfaction. Problems with Robinhood's cryptocurrency trading had already occurred on the 16th of last month, but the situation had not improved.

Dogecoin becomes 'national coin' amid expectations ahead of Elon Musk's SNL appearance

The surge in Dogecoin continues unabated. After Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, who will appear on NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) on the 8th, responded "I will do so" to a request to host the 'The Dogefather' segment, Dogecoin prices have continued to soar. U.S. individual investors seem confident that Dogecoin will rise from a coin to a bill (above $1).

Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency-related company Galaxy Digital, said about the Dogecoin surge, "It is a middle finger to the traditional financial system. Many people do not welcome the current financial system."

As Novogratz pointed out, Reddit is still full of encouragements not to sell Dogecoin but to hold it. Posts urging to buy Dogecoin through meme play are flooding in.

He explained that unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are no institutional investors buying Dogecoin, saying, "Dogecoin has become the national coin," while also warning, "The current surge is driven by investment enthusiasm, but once it starts to fall, it could experience a significant drop."

Investor and CNBC show host Jim Cramer announced that he sold half of his Ethereum holdings that day. He realized profits as Ethereum hit an all-time high.