Tenev said that since then, the agency has worked with Robinhood to decrease the amount of funds needed. "We had to conform to our regulatory capital requirements." "We had no choice in this case," he said. He went on to explain that the NSCC has a formula to determine how much a deposit it needed and one component of it involved risk, which can act as a kind of multiplier. Tenev provided some context by saying that, up to that point, Robinhood had raised just $2 billion in capital. "So they gave us a file with a deposit, and the request was around $3 billion, which is about an order of magnitude more than it typically is." Pacific, our operations receives a file from the NSCC, which is the National Securities Clearing Corporation," he said during the show. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev went into more specifics when he jumped on the Good Time Show with Tesla CEO Elon Musk via the exclusive audio-only Clubhouse appĀ on Jan. The company explained it was required to keep a substantial amount of money on hand in order to process all the trades happening through its clearinghouse, which is the part of the company that sends shares and money back and forth to other clearinghouses to complete trades. 29, Robinhood posted another blog about what happened. Robinhood JanuWhy did Robinhood stop users from buying GameStop shares? In light of current market volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC and $GME. In addition to AMC Bed, Bath and Beyond GameStop and Nokia, the companies that Robinhood listed by ticker symbol are phone maker BlackBerry, fashion retailer Express, headphone maker Koss and underwear company Naked Brand Group. "In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK," Robinhood said. It cited "market volatility" as its reasoning and would only allow customers to sell their shares of these companies, not buy or trade in any other way (more below). 28, Robinhood posted a blog saying it was limiting users by preventing them from buying stocks from several companies such as GameStop, AMC and Nokia. What happened with Robinhood and GameStop? It's popular among millennials, who make up a majority of its users and can conduct a variety of investments for free. Robinhood is an investing app that launched in 2015.