The first concept stock in the prediction market has arrived!

Original by Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@Azuma_eth)

The World Cup has kicked off, and total trading volume across prediction markets is hitting new highs. However, as the industry leader, Kalshi might not be in the best mood right now.

The reason isn't fluctuations in Kalshi's own business data, but rather the "sudden" emergence of another formidable competitor after Polymarket — one that was once its most important ally.

• Note from Odaily: Data sourced from Defillama.

Kalshi's Most Important Traffic Channel: Robinhood

Rewind to March 2025. At that time, Kalshi announced a partnership with US online brokerage Robinhood, which would leverage Kalshi to offer prediction market trading services to its users, allowing bets on political, economic, and sports events.

From a business model perspective, this was a classic case of "each getting what they need" — Robinhood, responsible for the user interface and trade distribution, could directly use Kalshi's mature product; Kalshi, providing the underlying market, matching, clearing, and regulatory compliance framework, could tap into the massive retail user pool that Robinhood possessed.

Subsequent events proved this partnership to be a "win-win." Through Robinhood's distribution channel, Kalshi indirectly acquired a massive number of users and transaction volume. Analysts at Piper Sandler estimated that "trading volume completed through Robinhood's channel accounted for approximately 25%-35% of Kalshi's total volume." These orders ultimately translated into revenue for both parties — Robinhood charges a separate fee for all Kalshi event contracts traded via this channel, at $0.01 per contract per direction, and then splits the revenue with Kalshi (the specific ratio is undisclosed).

The Q1 earnings report disclosed at the end of April this year showed that Robinhood facilitated 8.8 billion event contracts in Q1 2026, driving "other transaction revenue" up 320% year-over-year to $147 million. Prediction markets had become the fastest-growing new engine in Robinhood's product line.

However, this relationship has recently undergone some subtle changes.

Robinhood's Ambition: Reclaiming the Pie Shared with Kalshi

As internet history has proven countless times, when a channel gains enough bargaining power, it will no longer be satisfied with just being a channel. Robinhood is no exception.

Although the partnership with Kalshi has brought considerable revenue to Robinhood, with prediction markets becoming one of the fastest-growing new businesses on its platform, Robinhood is no longer content with the current revenue-sharing arrangement.

In their cooperative model, Kalshi was responsible for providing the market and infrastructure, while Robinhood provided users and order flow. However, as the partnership deepened, Robinhood gradually realized that what is truly scarce might not be the market itself, but the user entrance it firmly controls. After all, for most Robinhood users, they don't care whether their order is executed on Kalshi or another platform — users only see a trading entry point within the Robinhood app, not the underlying infrastructure provider.

In other words, Robinhood has always controlled one of the most important resources in prediction markets: distribution capability. Since the users belong to Robinhood, why should the orders flow to someone else?

In fact, while Robinhood was using Kalshi to rapidly validate demand for prediction markets, another Plan B was also being initiated slightly later.

In November 2025, Robinhood announced a joint venture with Wall Street quantitative trading giant Susquehanna, planning to acquire MIAXdx, a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange. According to official statements, the joint venture would operate an independent futures and derivatives exchange and clearinghouse in the future, with prediction markets being a key focus area. Initially, many viewed this primarily as an infrastructure investment, but as more details emerged, people gradually realized Robinhood's goal went far beyond just finding a new partner for prediction markets.

In January 2026, the transaction officially closed. Robinhood and Susquehanna obtained a 90% controlling stake in MIAXdx, along with a complete CFTC regulatory framework, including Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) qualifications. Subsequently, MIAXdx was renamed the Rothera Exchange, and its clearinghouse was rebranded as Rothera Clearing.

At this point, Robinhood already possessed all the core elements needed to independently operate a prediction market. The only thing missing was a mature product comparable to Kalshi, but for a company as experienced in developing internet products as Robinhood, this was clearly not a difficult task.

Rothera's Opportunity: The World Cup

In June 2026, after about half a year of accelerated development, the Rothera product gradually took shape. Robinhood finally made the move that was almost inevitable — gradually diverting orders that originally went to Kalshi into its own controlled system.

Robinhood deliberately chose a perfect launchpad for Rothera: the World Cup. In terms of prediction markets, the World Cup is undoubtedly one of the most impactful trading themes. Whether it's match outcomes, advancement results, or the overall champion, related markets can attract a large number of new users to participate in trading within a short period. For a newly launched platform like Rothera, there is no better scenario for a cold start than the World Cup.

According to Robinhood's official disclosure, during this World Cup with a total of 104 matches, some event contracts will be directed to Rothera for matching and clearing, including markets for single match results, the overall World Cup champion, and total goals per match. Compared to the previous model that relied entirely on Kalshi, this is also Robinhood's first large-scale diversion of prediction market orders into its own trading system.

Looking at the results, Rothera has clearly seized this opportunity. According to data disclosed by Hood House, an investment research self-media outlet tracking Robinhood's activities, Rothera completed 44.2 million contracts on June 12, corresponding to a USD trading volume of approximately $24.4 million. On June 13, Rothera completed 69.7 million contracts, corresponding to a USD volume of about $20.9 million. Although these numbers still lag behind Kalshi's popular markets that can reach hundreds of millions of dollars, considering Rothera has only been online for a few days, this performance is already a significant success.

For Robinhood and Kalshi, this signals a tilt in the balance of their partnership. On Robinhood's side, fee revenue that previously had to be shared with Kalshi can now be retained more within its own ecosystem. On Kalshi's side, this means one of its most important growth engines is beginning to show signs of weakening.

And the World Cup is clearly just the beginning of Rothera encroaching on Kalshi's territory. Looking further ahead, Robinhood will inevitably expand Rothera's coverage to more sports events, as well as economic and political themes. The orders that once flowed to Kalshi will be progressively intercepted by Rothera.

Since neither Robinhood nor Kalshi has ever disclosed the revenue-sharing ratio between them, we cannot calculate the exact value of this interception. However, considering that Robinhood generated $147 million in prediction market-related revenue in just Q1, and the Q2 World Cup and the further-off midterm elections are poised to drive even larger trading volumes, on an annualized basis, this interception value could amount to several hundred million dollars.

Who Controls Distribution, Controls Everything

The saga of Robinhood and Kalshi transitioning from allies to rivals once again validates a logic repeatedly proven in the internet market: Products are easy to build, but traffic is hard to find; whoever controls distribution controls everything.

In the past few years, markets generally believed Kalshi's core moat came from regulatory licenses, exchange qualifications, and clearing capabilities. Therefore, entities like Robinhood, as well as various media, community, and traffic platforms, were essentially just Kalshi's channels and traffic gateways. However, the emergence of Rothera proves one thing: in an era of severe product commoditization, the product itself may not be the most important factor. What is truly scarce is always the user.

Where users are, liquidity flows; where liquidity flows, markets will form. When Robinhood controls the gateway for tens of millions of retail users, it is entirely capable of directing those users to any trading venue. For users, they don't care whether their orders are ultimately executed on Kalshi or Rothera. As long as the experience isn't noticeably different, it doesn't matter who handles the matching and clearing behind the scenes.

If the theme of the prediction market industry in recent years was the market battle between Polymarket and Kalshi, the theme in the coming years might turn into a channel war. Robinhood incubating Rothera is essentially a reverse integration initiated by a channel towards the market layer. As more platforms with traffic gateways begin to realize the strategic value of prediction markets, similar stories are likely to continue. Whether it's exchanges, brokerages, social platforms, or media platforms, all could become new prediction market entry points.

When the entry point begins to control the market, and the channel gains pricing power, the ultimate winner in the prediction market industry may no longer be the platform responsible for matching orders, but the one closest to the user and best able to control distribution.

This was true in the internet era, and it remains true in the mobile internet era. This time is no different.