Robinhood Overwhelmed by Dogecoin Selloff After SNL Mention

Robinhood began experiencing trading problems while Dogecoin lover Elon Musk was hosting SNL.

By Jeff Benson

2 min read

For weeks, Dogecoin holders have been looking forward to Elon Musk hosting Saturday Night Live, anticipating that the token's most famous fan would use his appearance to promote the coin.

Though he (and his mom) mentioned token several times throughout the course of the show, it didn't send the price up as many hoped. Instead, the price of Dogecoin, the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, cratered. Before the show, it was priced at $0.66, near all-time highs. During the course of the show, it went as low as $0.51 as holders cashed out.

The sell-off coincided with problems at mobile trading app Robinhood, one of the primary places for US retail traders to buy DOGE.

Robinhood users took to Reddit and Twitter to complain about their inability to buy or sell Dogecoin.

It's not the first time this has happened. Robinhood Crypto, citing "unprecedented" demand, experienced multiple outages in mid-April. The problems have persisted. Just this past week, a Dogecoin surge led to another outage.

During the course of the show, Robinhood reported it was able to solve the issue, claiming the issue was related to "high trading volume and volatility."

Ironically, though, Robinhood suggested before the SNL airing that everything was under control.

"We're all paws on deck, all weekend," the app tweeted.

Make that "pause."

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