And also, they were offering customers a courtesy to use unsettled funds to buy stocks immediately, rather than waiting two business days for funds to clear. Most customers generally appreciate this feature (I certainly do!).
The only thing I'd say they did wrong (but not illegally so) was not having finer-grained controls ready to go to be able to shut down purchases of shares using unsettled funds and/or margin, while still allowing purchases by users with settled funds. This is a feature that some other brokers already have, i.e. you can buy large caps with unsettled funds but penny stocks require the use of settled funds.
Robinhood was still responsible for the clearinghouse-mandated deposit requirements, whether the purchase was from settled or unsettled funds.
My understanding is that the deposit funds, and the funds-fronted-on-margin, are two different groups of money.
IIRC the deposit requirement was raised to 100%.
Even if the customer funds were settled, and the customer wanted to buy 1 share of GME for $300, Robinhood would have to post $300 of it's own money, just in case. Now would Robinhood get that money back? Most likely, but that doesn't mean they don't have to have it to deposit in the first place.
the question becomes - who/what had the power to raise this deposit ratio, and did parties that would stand to lose a lot if GME continued to rise had influence in making this deposit requirement higher?
The DTCC wouldn't care one way or another if GME went up or down. They're goal is to make sure that different parties are able to settle their obligations with a very high degree of certainty, and ensure that investors won't lose their money with solvent brokerage firms or other intermediaries.
If you're arguing that the DTCC is beholden to the whims of a (relatively) miniscule hedge fund, you're crossing into conspiracy theory territory.
I'd genuinely shocked to see someone say they think Robinhood didnt do anything wrong. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.