Robinhood Crypto And Stock Trading App Is Down For A Second Monday

After experiencing a major outage last week, major stock and cryptocurrency trading app Robinhood is troubled again.

Robinhood encountered another technical outage on Monday, causing its platform to halt trading services, according to a March 9 tweet by Robinhood’s support team.

The firm announced earlier on the day:

“Trading is currently down on Robinhood and we’re investigating the issue. We’re focused on getting back up and running as soon as possible and we’ll update the status page with the latest.”

Subsequently, Robinhood has partially restored trading, noting that they are working to get the platform back up and running fully. According to onlinereports, the platform was partly functional after just an hour of downtime.

As of press time, Robinhood app is still experiencing issues with equities, options and cryptocurrency trading, according to Robinhood’s status page. According to the website, Robinhood has already identified the issue and implemented necessary measures to fix the problem, while those trading services are experiencing “degraded performance.”

The latest outage on Robinhood follows a major technical problem that happened last week. As reported by Cointelegraph, the day-long outage on March 2 purportedly caused Robinhood users to miss out on the biggest one-day point gain in the Dow Jones history, with users apparently planning to start a legal class action against Robinhood.

According to a report by CNBC, a Robinhood client based in Florida filed a federal class lawsuit on March 4. The plaintiff, Travis Taaffe, reportedly alleges that Robinhood breached its contract by failing to “provide a functioning platform,” causing traders to be unable to transfer money while stock markets surged.

Jesse Eberle is a former bond broker at brokerage firm Tradition Securities & Derivatives, who was one of the Robinhood traders that suffered from the outage last week. He noted that the platform started the brokerage war when Robinhood launched zero-fee trading back in 2014. Eberle, who has been a Robinhood user for 20 months to date, predicted that the company will eventually lose the battle as people will shift to more reliable platforms.

While some reports claim that Robinhood founders said that they would compensate investors impacted by the outage on a case-by-case basis, the company’s customer agreement outlines that Robinhood will not be responsible for outages on the platform.

The 44-page document reads:

“Although considerable effort is expended to make the Website, App and other operational and communications channels available around the clock, Robinhood does not warrant that these channels will be available and error free every minute of the day. I agree that Robinhood will not be responsible for temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures, nor shall Robinhood be liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond our control, including but not limited to the failure of interconnecting and operating systems, computer viruses, forces of nature, labor disputes and armed conflicts.”

A group of Robinhood clients that were unhappy about the technical outage brought together to create a twitter account in response to the damaging downtime. As of press time, the account has amassed over 7,400 followers.

Crypto Appears On The Popular TV Show: The Simpsons

One of the newest episode of “The Simpsons” aired has just featured Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory as a guest star to explain cryptocurrencies and how a blockchain works.

In the song and dance predicts cryptocurrency to be the future money, the animated ledger states: “Each day I’m closer, to being the cash of the future. Not in your wallet, I’m in your computer!

At the end of Jim’s talk, there is a subliminal message on screen. It further explains how cryptocurrencies work, part of which says:

“Using the word “cryptocurrency” repeatedly while defining cryptocurrency makes it seem like we have a novice’s understanding of cryptocurrency. Well that is a total pile of cryptocurrency. In this system, rules are defined for the creation of additional units of cryptocurrency. They can be generated by fiat like traditional currency or just thrown around randomly or all given to LeBron.”

The crypto community welcomed the episode. Altcoin Daily account has commented:

“The Simpsons did it! Cryptocurrency explained to Lisa by the great Jim Parsons on #TheSimpsons! It’s the money of the future! Bullish!”

Some comments to the tweet also pointed out that the Simpsons has a reputation for predicting the future over the years. Ten years ago it showcased Donald Trump as the president of the U.S., and more recently guessed the Game of Thrones series finale.

Weekly News Overview: Cryptocurrency

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Email Extortion Scam Targets Googles AdSense

A new extortion scam targeting website owners serving banner ads through Google’s AdSense program has begun circulating the Internet. The malevolent scheme demands Bitcoin (BTC) in exchange for preventing an attack, which would purportedly lead to the users’ AdSense account suspension.

The email-based extortion scheme was reported by security news and investigation blog KrebsOnSecurity, on Feb. 17. The blog post detailed that some site owners received a message as their site had been spotted by the malicious program as one seeking revenue from publishing an ad.

Coinbase Pitches Crypto As A Solution For Racial Discrimination

To mark Black History Month, Coinbase has launched an advertising campaign with the pitch that cryptocurrencies can help tackle racial injustice in the financial sector.

As part of the campaign, the exchange published a blog post on Feb. 13 with the results of a survey it conducted in the United States and United Kingdom.

The crux of Coinbase’s survey centers on the notion that blockchain and cryptocurrencies, as trustless technologies with pseudonymous functionality, would be more color-blind than traditional financial services.

Gemcoin Founder Confesses To Fraud

Steve Chen, the mastermind behind the $147 million Gemcoin cryptocurrency scheme, has admitted to wire fraud and tax evasion in a plea agreement.

The 62-year-old Southern California resident agreed that he and other co-conspirators fraudulently promoted a cryptocurrency called Gemcoin (or Gem Coins) that helped fleece $147 million from 70,000 victims.

Chen, also known as “Boss,” reported an income of $138,000 in 2014 which is a far cry from the $4.8 million he now admits to pocketing that year. Chen used the proceeds to buy homes and pay for a gambling habit, authorities said.

Binance Pauses Trading To Fix Technical Issues

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted trading on its platform to resolve an unexpected technical issue with its infrastructure.

An announcement published by Binance on Feb. 19 notes that, due to unscheduled system maintenance, the exchange suspended most of its activities. More precisely, as of press time, it is not possible to perform “deposits, withdrawals, spot trading, margin trading, P2P trading, lending, redemption, as well as asset transfers from sub-accounts, margin accounts, futures accounts, and fiat wallets” on the platform.

In a statement shared with Cointelegraph, Binance reassured its users that partner exchanges such as Binance.US were unaffected and that trading activity will resume shortly.

Coinbase Pitches Crypto As A Solution For Racial Discrimination

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To mark Black History Month, Coinbase has launched an advertising campaign with the pitch that cryptocurrencies can help tackle racial injustice in the financial sector.

As part of the campaign, the exchange published a blog post on Feb. 13 with the results of a survey it conducted in the United States and United Kingdom.

Based on a sample of 5,126 respondents, Coinbase’s data appears to indicate that just one in three Black Americans perceive the financial system as equally accessible to people of all ethnicities.

Moreover, twice as many Black Americans reported that they had been negatively impacted by their race or gender within the traditional financial system — 48% as compared with 24% of White Americans.

This negative experience ostensibly translates into an increased receptivity to cryptocurrencies — 70% of Black Americans responded that they were interested in learning more about crypto, as compared with 42% of White Americans.

As one voice in support of crypto’s being equitable financial instrument, Coinbase cites Vernon Johnson, co-founder and chief technical officer of blockchain startup Yup.

“Many cryptocurrency transactions are pseudonymous and don’t require the disclosure of your real-world identity, which may ease some of the apprehensions about racial discrimination in Finance 1.0. It becomes much harder to perceive racial identity in a world where people’s real identities are obfuscated.”

Johnson adds that, with cryptocurrencies, access to financial services relies solely on individuals’ digital reputation and transaction history — dispensing with the need for in-person meetings or the disclosure of identity documents.

However, as Know Your Customer rules continue to be tightened across countries — Coinbase itself requires photo I.D. for registration — this hard and fast line between crypto and traditional finance when it comes to pseudonymity is arguably eroding.

Indeed, the crypto space itself is also prone to its own biases. As reported on Cointelegraph, the vast majority of Bitcoin community engagement is male and can often be tone-deaf regarding the lack of women taking part in the space. In 2018, only 3 of the 88 speakers at the North American Bitcoin Conference were women, while the conference after-party was held at a strip club.