Robinhood’s prediction markets business brought in $156 million in the second quarter. Its crypto trading business brought in $100 million over the same period, down 38% year on year.
That is the number underneath a claim its chief executive made this week. Speaking to CNBC’s Mad Money, Vlad Tenev argued that crypto is taking “a disproportionate share” of prediction market activity and that “within a few years, sports will actually be in the minority.”
He may turn out to be right. What his own quarter shows is the opposite relationship to the one the forecast implies.
The Claim With No Number Behind It
Tenev gave no breakdown. He said crypto is taking a disproportionate share and did not say of what, against what, or from when.
Nor is the figure available elsewhere. Robinhood has not published a category split for its event contracts, and neither has anyone else. So the central claim in the story, that crypto is on course to overtake sports on these venues, currently rests on an assertion by the person selling the venue.
The growth around it is real and documented. Event contract revenue rose from $104 million in the first quarter to $156 million in the second. Contract volume went from 9 billion to 13 billion over the same stretch. In August the platform ran 4.7 billion contracts, roughly fifteen times the volume of August a year earlier.
The Take Rate Is Being Cut on Purpose
One detail complicates reading volume as a proxy for the business.
Robinhood earns about 1.15 cents per contract, and it is deliberately reducing that. Shiv Verma, a managing director at the firm, has said it is “seeking to lower the spread it collects from users, especially on less popular bets,” routing trades through Rothera, its in-house venture with the market maker Susquehanna rather than through Kalshi and others.
That is a sensible way to take share and it means contract counts will keep outrunning revenue. A headline volume figure fifteen times higher than last year describes activity, not earnings, and the gap between the two is widening by design.
What It Actually Says About Crypto
For a crypto reader the relevant line is not the forecast. It is the $100 million.
Crypto trading revenue at one of the largest retail brokerages in the United States fell 38% year on year, in a quarter when the same firm’s newest product line out-earned it by more than half. That is one broker and one quarter, and it is a real signal about where retail risk appetite went.
The qualifier matters though. Prediction markets are not a rival to crypto so much as another way to take a position, and some of those contracts are themselves crypto contracts. Tenev pointed at one directly, noting that anyone with a view on crypto market structure legislation can trade it. Exposure has not left. It has changed shape, into an instrument regulated by the CFTC as a derivative rather than held as a token.
