Key facts
- Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes crypto prediction markets will soon surpass sports wagers.
- Robinhood's event-contract revenue reached $156 million in Q2 2026, a tenfold increase year-over-year.
- 4.7 billion contracts were traded in August, a 15-fold increase from the previous year.
- Robinhood built its event-contract hub on Kalshi and partnered with Susquehanna via Rothera.
- Lawmakers have introduced over a dozen bills targeting prediction markets, including the PREDICT Act.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes that cryptocurrency-related contracts are increasingly dominating the company's prediction markets, potentially pushing sports-related wagers into the minority within a few years. Tenev made these remarks during an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC's "Mad Money," highlighting that crypto contracts are already capturing an outsized portion of the business.
Prediction markets, also known as event contracts, allow users to trade on the outcome of specific events, such as economic decisions, elections, or sports games. These are regulated as derivatives by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Tenev emphasized that this regulatory distinction sets them apart from traditional sports betting.
Robinhood's event-contract business has seen significant growth, with revenue surging more than tenfold year-over-year to $156 million in the second quarter of 2026. This segment has become Robinhood's fastest-growing business line, even as crypto trading revenue declined. In August alone, contracts traded 4.7 billion times, approximately 15 times the volume recorded in August of the previous year.
The company's prediction market infrastructure is built upon Kalshi, an exchange that successfully navigated a legal challenge with the CFTC regarding election-related contracts. Robinhood further developed this through Rothera, a joint venture with trading firm Susquehanna, which was tested during the World Cup. Recently, Robinhood expanded its partnerships by taking minority equity stakes in Crypto.com and its prediction-market spinoff OG.com.
Competition in the event contract space is intensifying, with platforms like CME, Coinbase, and various decentralized exchanges vying for traders. Crypto-native platforms like Polymarket were early pioneers in this area.
Tenev frames these prediction markets, for both sports and crypto, as a bet on ownership, suggesting that individuals with financial stakes are more engaged and that a society with more owners of quality financial assets is more stable. He sees crypto contracts as a way to directly monetize ideas and insights, citing the Clarity Act, a proposed bill concerning digital asset regulation, as an example of a market that can be created.
However, the expansion of prediction markets faces scrutiny from lawmakers. More than a dozen bills have been introduced since January targeting these markets, including the PREDICT Act, which aims to prohibit members of Congress and senior officials from trading contracts tied to political events. Critics express concern that combining sports and political wagers with retirement accounts blurs the lines between investing and gambling.