Robinhood stops the games

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week the team — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — recorded a bonus Equity Shot to help our listeners make sense out of the GameStop trading bonanza happening all over the internet. The story is fast-moving and news continues to break (twice during our recording, in fact) about how trading apps such as Robinhood are responding to the tear. Still, this type of story is worth a temperature check and timestamp because it feels like it's a pivotal moment in many ways.

Here's our coverage on the site so far for people playing catch up:

• How Trading Apps are responding to the GameStop fustercluck — This piece from yesterday started our coverage of the response from trading apps concerning GameStop.

• GameStop, meme stocks, and the revenge of the retail trader — This piece dug into what the initial story was about, with some jokes.

• Could meme stocks like GameStop kill Bitcoin’s rise? — This piece looks at what the other side of the stonk coin could be.

• Robinhood restricts trading in GameStop after retail brouhaha shakes markets — This piece looked into Robinhood's moves from this morning, as the larger story went from huge to tectonic.

• And, we gave a shout out to a good post by The Margins, which gave perspective on how the unescapable GameStop stock crash will have tough and not meme-y consequences.

Back later in the day with our usual weekly episode, which will not include any of the following phrases: stonks, retail traders, Robinhood or and r/Wallstreetbets. We promise. Talk soon!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.