Robinhood, the financial trading platform that acknowledges that both allows and then hampers the unprecedented rise of Gamestop shares, lifted all trading restrictions on Friday and allowed users to buy shares in Reddit-promoted companies after a week of financial turmoil .
The company has been criticized by users for limiting the amount of Gamestop and AMC shares individuals could buy following an increase in Reddit’s share prices. “There are currently no temporary limits to increasing your positions,” Robinhood said in a statement on its website.
According to Reuters, Robinhood only allowed to trade 500 shares in GameStop, a chain for video games and 5,500 AMC shares, after an initial boom in mid-January. The lifting of the restrictions took place when the US Treasury Department apparently began investigating to prevent a similar series of events from happening again.
Robinhood has been accused of protecting hedge funds, some of which pay the company to execute their users’ transactions, when it imposes restrictions on purchases.
Thousands of retailers have used Robinhood – which has positioned itself as a user-friendly platform for inexperienced investors – to buy Gamestop, AMC, Blackberry and other companies after WallStreetBets sub-Reddit inspired a mass trading opportunity.
Politicians as ideologically diverse as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz criticized Robinhood, with Ocasio-Cortez suggesting a congressional hearing be held in the company. But Robinhood said the restrictions are necessary to cover potential losses.
“Since individual volatile securities amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in deposit requirements, we had to take steps to limit the purchase of the volatile bonds to ensure that we could comfortably meet our requirements,” reads a statement on Robinhood’s website.
Axios reported on Friday that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had convened regulators following the Gamestop boom, to discuss the events of the past two weeks preventing the boom and break.
Axios said the government is investigating the suppression of market manipulation and taxation on financial transactions.