On Reddit, especially /r/wsb, many people painted it to be a common folks vs. Wall Street hedge funds story. But I've always thought the reality was that it's a hedge funds vs. hedge funds story where plenty of big players made millions, if not billions last week, then shorted the stock at $3-400 and made millions more on the way down. The retail players were probably just caught between a group of 800lbs fighting gorillas. I wouldn't even be surprised if Melvin Capital made all their money back by shorting near the peak.

Additionally I'm beyond disgusted at how "any publicity is good publicity" turned out to be so true and Robinhood came out stronger than ever from this whole debacle: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/why-investors-were-willing-t...

> “It’s the fastest growing consumer app, and has better engagement than social media,” one investor said. “The majority of those new traders won’t be trading GameStop.”

Having "User Engagement" as a benchmark for an investing app is beyond immoral. Robinhood has always been extremely predatory at encouraging users to actively gamble with their investments, and utilizes all kinds of user manipulating tactics such as gamification that has no place in a finance app.

They will have a very successful IPO, and the top shareholders/investors will make billions, all from a product named Robinhood that excels at almost nothing but transferring wealth from the masses to the elites.

And it will be hailed as a true Silicon Valley success story.