Written by: Jose

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that crypto-related categories are taking up a “disproportionately high share” of Robinhood’s predicted-market business. He believes that within a few years, the market share of sports categories will decline by at least several points. Revenue from Robinhood event contracts surged more than 10-fold year over year in the second quarter of 2026, reaching $156 million. In just August, the number of contract trades hit 4.7 billion times—about 15 times the trading volume in August 2025.

Tenev said that crypto event contracts are about to repeat the story of Robinhood’s early days, when it disrupted Wall Street trading commissions, and move in to capture the sports-betting market. In an interview on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer, Tenev said that crypto-related contracts have already secured an extremely high share in Robinhood’s prediction markets. He expects that a few years from now, sports betting will become a niche category in that business.

Predictive markets, also known as event contracts, let users place bets—buying “yes” or “no”—on the outcome of events, such as Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, elections, and soccer matches. This is very different from how betting works on traditional sports-betting platforms. In the U.S., the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) classifies these transactions as derivatives under its oversight. The CFTC also regulates futures and options, and Tenev uses this as his basis to argue that it isn’t just gambling packaged differently.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev

“We’ve already seen other categories like crypto take up a sizable share of predictive markets,” Tenev told Jim Cramer. “I think that within a few years, the sports category’s share will become a minority—similar to the proactive trading business model on large platforms.”

He describes sports contracts as a “wedge product” that can drive the entire business. “Sports is a great customer-acquisition tool—it helps the platform build liquidity, attract users, and establish markets,” he said. “But the industry’s expansion footprint will go far beyond sporting events.”

The relevant data confirms the business shift, although the timeline is only Tenev’s own projection. In the second quarter of 2026, Robinhood’s event contract revenue rose to $156 million. The predictive market became the company’s fastest-growing business line, while its crypto spot trading revenue, in the same period, actually declined. In just August, event contract trades in the predictive market reached 4.7 billion—15 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 legal battle against the CFTC, allowing it to launch election-related event contracts. After that, Robinhood rolled out its joint venture platform, Rothera—an initiative it set up in partnership with trading firm Susquehanna and obtained a CFTC license for. During this year’s World Cup, the platform completed testing. This month, Robinhood went a step further by partnering with Crypto.com and its predictive market sub-brand OG.com, adding a third trading and clearing settlement partner.

Competition on the track is getting fiercer. CME, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Coinbase, and a number of decentralized platforms are all vying for traders in event contracts. Long before Wall Street brokers entered the scene, native crypto platforms like Polymarket had already made the event contract niche hot.

Tenev views all of this—whether sports or crypto derivatives contracts—as a bet on ownership.

“We believe ownership is critical—not only because holders own assets and can benefit from them, but also because a society with more high-quality financial assets is inherently more stable.” He uses the same line of reasoning to explain Robinhood’s retirement account 3% additional benefit. (Note: by signing up for Robinhood Gold membership, users deposit funds into their personal retirement accounts, and Robinhood adds an extra 3% subsidy to the deposited amount.)

Crypto derivatives perfectly fit this idea: it can turn personal viewpoints into a trade. Tenev gave an example from the U.S. (the CLARITY Act): “With predictive markets, you can monetize your view and market insights directly. If you have your own judgment about legislation for the structure of the crypto market (the CLARITY Act), then we have corresponding markets for that.”

But not everyone in Washington is supportive. In particular, the model of “any event can be turned into a trading market” sounds to many people like “allowing bets on anything.”

Since January of this year, lawmakers have submitted more than a dozen bills targeting predictive markets, including the (PREDICT Act), which would prohibit members of Congress and senior officials from trading event contracts tied to political events. Critics argue that putting sports and political-betting products and retirement accounts on the same platform blurs the line between investing and gambling, and regulators are still working out the contradictions involved.

Tenev didn’t wait for this regulatory debate to settle. Based on his estimates, within just a few years, sports contracts will drop to at least single digits in the share of Robinhood’s event contract business.