Robinhood's chief executive told CNBC's Mad Money that contracts tied to crypto prices already claim an outsize slice of the firm's prediction-market activity — and predicted sports betting will fall into the minority there "within a few years."

Sports were the on-ramp. In Tenev's words they were a "wedge" that pulled in customers and liquidity. But the rest of the market is accelerating past them: prediction products brought Robinhood $156 million of revenue in Q2 2026, more than ten times the year-ago figure, becoming the company's fastest-growing line even as its crypto trading revenue declined. August alone saw 4.7 billion event contracts change hands, about 15 times the year-earlier level.

Kalshi — whose exchange powers part of Robinhood's offering — shows the same rotation across the industry. Crypto prediction volume there climbed from $337 million in January to roughly $7.5 billion in August, more than a twenty-two-fold jump inside seven months. For the week ending Sept. 20, sports accounted for 21% of Kalshi volume, Bitcoin-specific contracts 13%, and multi-outcome bundles 62%: roughly three quarters of all activity sat outside sports.

Why it matters

These products are binary wagers on what happens next — does Bitcoin close above a strike when a 15-minute timer expires? — and they sit under the CFTC as derivatives rather than gambling products. Entry costs start at a cent; a correct call settles at a dollar. That design runs on sheer throughput, and crypto generates bursts of throughput no sports calendar can replicate.

It also helps that crypto contracts have stayed clear of the courtroom fights now surrounding sports-linked ones, where Kalshi and Polymarket are being sued by cities and states. The fastest-growing corner of the market is also the least legally contested. And the boom is an engagement story, not a price story: no coins change hands, so prediction markets channel trading energy without moving spot markets. That fits the broader pattern of crypto's institutional plumbing thickening even as regulators and banks spar over charters — see the OCC trust-charter lawsuit — while fresh money keeps arriving through regulated products like Bitcoin ETFs, which opened October with a $103 million inflow.

Robinhood is building for that future: its joint venture with Susquehanna, Rothera, owns about 90% of the MIAXdx exchange (formerly LedgerX) that underpins its contracts, and in September it bought into Crypto.com and OG.com — minority positions inside a $5 billion transaction following a Citadel Securities investment.

What to watch

  • Robinhood's Q3 results: whether prediction revenue compounds from the $156M second-quarter base.
  • The Robinhood Chain rollout — Tenev's other fee-revenue bet, adding blockchain rails to the brokerage.
  • Event contracts on the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill Tenev name-checked, as a test of whether policy questions can rival Bitcoin-price ones.
  • State court outcomes on sports contracts — an outright ban would tilt the mix toward crypto faster still.
  • Bitcoin volatility itself: with BTC at $84,636 and down 2.1% today, choppy tape feeds the quarter-hour products.

MarketRadar take

The math favors the house, not the bettor. Robinhood's $156 million divided across 13.6 billion second-quarter contracts comes to roughly 1.15 cents of revenue apiece — a margin so thin it only works at colossal scale. Kalshi's twenty-two-fold crypto ramp and Bernstein's $10.8 billion 2030 revenue projection show that scale arriving. For crypto investors, the read is neutral on spot prices but constructive on activity: these markets monetize opinions without touching the asset, and the CEPR finding — one-fifth lost before fees on the average contract — says the growth story belongs to exchanges and brokers, not to bettors. The coins everyone wagers on keep doing what they do, whatever the 15-minute timer says.