Robinhood shut down the buying feature for shares of GameStop and other stocks on Thursday morning (Jan. 28), infuriating users. The stock-trading platform has made a name for itself for making investing more accessible to everyone, which users are now saying is hypocritical seeing as it restricted stock-buying options hours after the GameStop stock boom.
One Robinhood user who was angered by the new restrictions was Ja Rule, who had endorsed the app just hours before it limited several stock-buying options.
“Yo this is a fucking CRIME what [Robinhood] is doing DO NOT SELL!!! HOLD THE LINE… WTF,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Along with Ja’s encouragement, #HoldTheLine started trending on Twitter Thursday afternoon as investors urged one another not to sell any of their heavily shortened stocks that were restricted on Robinhood.
The “Mesmerize” rapper further called on investors not to sell, calling Robinhood’s restriction of the stocks a “crime.”
“They hedge fund guy shorted these stocks now we can’t buy them ppl start selling out of fear… we lose money they make money on the short… THIS IS A FUCKING CRIME!!!” he wrote.
The news follows yesterday’s whirlwind of investments, as retail investors on Reddit led a GameStop stock surge, ballooning the company’s shares by more than 400 percent. On Monday (Jan. 25), the company’s shares were priced at $64. On Wednesday (Jan. 27), they had skyrocketed to $347.
In a blog post, Robinhood explained that the market’s “volatility” led them to stop users from purchasing the stock.
“We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only,” the company wrote.
Robinhood also restricted users from buying AMC, BlackBerry, Bed Bath and Beyond, Express, Koss, Naked Brand Corp. and Nokia stocks.
Many, along with Ja Rule, complained about the platform’s handling of the stock boom on Twitter.
“Either #Robinhood allows people to trade freely in the market or they will lose millions of users,” one person wrote.
“Robinhood canceled stock orders on #gme #amc #NOK etc…. There should be a class action lawsuit. I thought we had a free market,” another tweeted. “So Wall Street is OK with me losing hundreds of dollars, so that rich investors can’t be called out on their risks.”
See Ja’s tweets about the matter below.