Robinhood CEO Vladberg is staying in a hotel due to a setback after the end of January’s GameStop deal, Bloomberg reports.
Robinhood restricted trading on GameStop shares from January 28 after an unexpected rise in the share price of 2000% by retail investors. Robinhood users, including members of the Reddit forum r / WallStreetBets who applauded the GameStop event, accused the firm of unfairly manipulating free market trading.
Some setbacks to the madness have become violent. Tenev has avoided going home for the past few days after receiving death threats, one source told Bloomberg.
Read more: EXCLUSIVE: Tiger Global is leading a huge $ 200 million investment in Robinhood rival Public.com at a valuation of $ 1.2 billion, quadrupling the company’s value in just two months.
Police in Menlo Park told Insider’s Tyler Sonnemaker a handful of protesters threw feces at Robinhood’s headquarters and sawed through a statue on the property. According to The Wall Street Journal, institutional investors who bet against GameStop said they had received personal threats.
Robinhood initially said in a release that it was blocking the purchase of GameStop shares to help customers stay abreast of market volatility, but it was later clear that the deposit was required by deposit requirements. of clearing houses registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“To be clear, this decision was not taken on the guidance of any market maker we are going to or other market participants,” Tenev said on Twitter.
Well-known business leaders and lawmakers are questioning Robinhood’s decision to restrict trade. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Robinhood’s decision “unacceptable” and Mark Cuban asked on Twitter if the app had stopped trading “because they were losing their a ** on these transactions.”
Tenev will testify at a congressional hearing on Thursday about his firm’s decision to discontinue GameStop trading. The CEO recently said on the All-In Podcast that his company was able to communicate why it restricted trading a little better.
“Once the emails went out, the conspiracy theories started coming right away. So my phone blew up with ‘How could you do that? How could you be on the side of the hedge funds?’,” Tenev said. podcast. “Of course we are not on the side of the hedge funds. We build products for our customers. And we just had to do what we did to meet our deposit requirements.”
Robinhood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.