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Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib has issued a public call for a hearing into the recent actions of brokerage app Robinhood related to the stock of GameStop, the price of which hit eye-popping levels this week.

Tlaib’s comments came in response to an article from VICE’s Motherboard about Robinhood’s move to restrict buy orders for stocks like GameStop and others that have been the subject of Reddit-based trader activity in recent days. 

“This is beyond absurd. @FSCDems need to have a hearing on Robinhood’s market manipulation. They’re blocking the ability to trade to protect Wall St. hedge funds, stealing millions of dollars from their users to protect people who’ve used the stock market as a casino for decades,” Tlaib wrote. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued a similar call on Thursday.

“As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary,” she wrote. Texas Senator Ted Cruz tweeted support for Ocasio-Cortez’s statement shortly after.

“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, including $AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, and $TRVG. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities,” Robinhood said in its Thursday blog post.

On Wednesday, Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki said that officials were “monitoring the situation.”

Robhinhood and other trading platforms have drawn intense criticism because of actions perceived to be intended to stifle retail trading activity to the benefit of institutional forces — namely those who were negatively impacted by this week’s GameStop stock move.

That stock was heavily shorted prior to the price jump, and one short-selling firm received a $2.8 billion-dollar bailout in light of related losses. Accusations of manipulation and market suppression were enhanced in the past day after the heart of the Reddit community’s trading actions, r/WallStreetBets, was temporarily suspended and a related Discord server was taken offline.

GameStop’s stock, which hit a high of $438 on Thursday, is currently trading at roughly $190.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

“Bitcoin looks like a long-duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing about 80% of,” Dalio said.

The price of the meme-themed cryptocurrency was on a tear Thursday morning, with market activity pushing its price well above $0.02 to hit a new all-time high.

The market advancement appeared to retreat after nearly the $0.03 level, with the price of DOGE falling below that level on Robinhood and other exchanges. Market data from TradingView shows that dogecoin started the day at about $0.0075. 

As of the time of writing, crypto exchanges and Robinhood appear to be trading between between $0.017 and $0.018, with the price of DOGE fluctuating around $0.017 on Robinhood.

Even with the renewed volatility, dogecoin’s price is still up well over 100% on the day — though the underlying factor is far from clear beyond a general environment of market euphoria. As Decrypt noted earlier this month, the meme-themed crypto is a favorite of entrepreneur Elon Musk, who periodically issues tweets about dogecoin. Others have noted that investors who congregate on the social media platform Reddit may be fueling the rise.

The price of dogecoin last reached similar levels in early 2018, when the price peaked around $0.017 per DOGE.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The integration will enable Prime Trust to manage the custody of digital securities and cryptocurrencies for its customers using tZERO for trading.

Bitcoin is “scarce” (and therefore valuable) when demand for it exceeds the available supply, not because of its 21 million hard cap, says our columnist.

Bridgewater Associates is taking a closer look at bitcoin, according to founder Ray Dalio.

“I am writing this to clarify what I think of Bitcoin,” Dalio wrote in the column Bridgewater Daily Observations — the firm’s daily newsletter sent by the CIOs to its clients, one of whom shared details with The Block. “I believe Bitcoin is one hell of an invention.”

Dalio previously said that he didn’t think bitcoin would work as an everyday currency. He stepped back a bit from his longstanding critique of bitcoin last month, saying that cryptos like bitcoin could be a “gold-like asset.” Dalio also expressed concerns about storing bitcoin securely against cyber attacks.

In the note, Dalio added that Bitcoin “looks like a long duration option on a highly unknown future that I could put an amount of money in that I wouldn’t mind losing 80% of.”

Later in the letter, he explains how Bitcoin could potentially be an alternative to gold.

“This is what bitcoin looks like to this non-expert,” he added. 

“I tell you that I and my colleagues at Bridgewater are intently focusing on alternative storehold of wealth assets and expect Bridgewater to soon offer an alt-cash fund and a storehold of wealth fund in order to better deal with the devaluation of money and credit that we consider to be a major risk and opportunity and Bitcoin  won’t escape our scrutiny.”

A spokesman for Dalio did not return comment ahead of publication.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

How an army of amateur traders from the WallStreetBets Reddit channel is turning the tables on traditional investors.

Digital-market traders found amusement in the GameStop saga. They also saw an opportunity for self-reflection. Here’s what Niall Ferguson, Caitlin Long, Mati Greenspan and Jonathan Mohan said.

Europol worked with Spain’s Civil Guard and Catalan police to arrest six suspects aged in connection with the scheme.

The firms aim to build technology that “appeals to traditional institutions, payment providers [and] governments.”