Vlad Tenev, the head of Robinhood, threw a major flare. He said bluntly that crypto-related categories are taking a “disproportionately large share” away within this broker’s prediction market business. His verdict is straightforward: within a few years, the share of sports contracts will shrink to at least a minority.
Get the message out clearly first. Robinhood event contracts’ revenue surged more than tenfold year over year in the second quarter of 2026, reaching $156 million. Looking just at August, the number of contract trades hit 4.7 billion—about fifteen times the same period in 2025. Tenev likened the moment on display to a replay of the history when Robinhood used zero commission to hit Wall Street trading fee rates. This time, the target is the turf of sports betting.
On CNBC’s (Mad Money) show, he discussed it with Jim Cramer. Tenev’s exact words were that crypto and related categories have already taken up a substantial share of prediction markets. He made a prediction: within a few years, sports betting will become a niche category in this line of business, with the industry’s structure looking like the active-trading business of large platforms.
Prediction markets are also called event contracts. Users can trade bets on whether an event turns out to be yes or no—Fed interest-rate decisions, elections, and even soccer matches can all be set up as markets. This is not the same as how traditional sports-betting platforms work. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission classifies this kind of trading as subject to derivatives regulation, within the same framework as futures and options. Tenev cites this as an argument to show it isn’t just gambling packaged differently.
He likened sports contracts to a “wedge product” that can move the entire business. Sports, he said, is a great customer-acquisition tool—helping the platform build liquidity, attract users, and create markets. But the boundaries of industry expansion go far beyond sports events.
The shift in business is supported by data, but the timeline is Tenev’s own forecast. In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood’s event-contract revenue rose to $156 million, making prediction markets the company’s fastest-growing business line. Meanwhile, revenue from crypto spot trading moved in the opposite direction during the same period. In August alone, event-contract trades totaled 4.7 billion, fifteen times the trading volume from the same period last year.
Robinhood’s event-contract business is built on the Kalshi exchange. Kalshi previously won a lawsuit against the CFTC, gaining approval to launch event contracts related to elections. After that, Robinhood set up a joint venture platform called Rothera—its project with trading firm Susquehanna, established with a CFTC license—and completed testing during this year’s World Cup. This month, Robinhood took another step further, partnering with Crypto.com and its prediction-market sub-brand OG.com, adding a third trading-clearing-and-settlement partner.
More and more players are entering the space. CME, Coinbase, and a number of decentralized platforms are all competing for event-contract traders. Before Wall Street brokers even entered the market, native crypto platforms like Polymarket had already popularized event contracts.
Tenev views all of this—whether sports contracts or crypto contracts—as a bet on ownership. We believe ownership is crucial, not just because holders can benefit from the assets they possess, but also because a society with more high-quality financial assets is more stable. He uses this same logic to explain Robinhood’s extra 3% benefit for retirement accounts: by signing up for Robinhood Gold, users deposit funds into their personal retirement accounts, and Robinhood provides an additional subsidy of 3% of the deposited amount.
Crypto contracts fit this理念 perfectly: they can turn personal opinions into a transaction. Tenev gave an example from the U.S. (the CLARITY Act). With prediction markets, you can monetize your views and market insights directly. If you have your own judgment about legislation for the crypto market structure (the CLARITY Act), then we will set up corresponding trading markets for you.
Not everyone over in Washington is buying it. Especially this model of “any event can be set up into a trading market” — in many people’s ears, that effectively means “allowing bets on anything.” Since January of this year, lawmakers have submitted a dozen-plus bills targeting prediction markets. (PREDICT Act) They aim to prohibit event contracts that tie trading by members of Congress and senior officials to political events. Critics argue that placing sports, political bet products, and retirement accounts on the same platform blurs the line between investing and gambling. Regulators are still working out this contradiction.
Tenev didn’t plan to wait for the outcome of this regulatory debate. Based on his calculations, in just a few years sports contracts’ share of Robinhood’s event-contract business will drop to a small minority.
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