预测市场概念第一股出现了！

Original by Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Azuma (@Azuma_eth)

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

The reason isn't Kalshi's own business data fluctuations, but rather the "sudden" emergence of another formidable competitor following Polymarket — and this opponent 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 events related to politics, economics, sports, and more.

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

Subsequent events proved this collaboration to be a "win-win." Through Robinhood's distribution channel, Kalshi indirectly gained vast numbers of users and transaction volume. Piper Sandler analysts estimated that "transactions completed via the Robinhood channel accounted for about 25%-35% of Kalshi's total trading volume." These orders eventually translated into revenue on both sides' books — Robinhood independently charged a fee of $0.01 per contract per direction for all Kalshi event contracts traded through its channel, then split the revenue with Kalshi (specific ratio undisclosed).

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

Recently, however, the relationship has taken a subtle turn.

Robinhood's Ambition: Reclaiming the Pie Shared with Kalshi

As internet history has demonstrated time and again, when a channel gains sufficient leverage, it stops being content with just being a channel. Robinhood is no exception.

Although the partnership with Kalshi brought substantial revenue, Robinhood is no longer satisfied with the current revenue-sharing arrangement, especially as prediction markets become one of the fastest-growing new businesses on its platform.

In their cooperation model, Kalshi provided the market and infrastructure while Robinhood provided users and order flow. However, as the partnership deepened, Robinhood gradually realized that what was truly scarce might not be the market itself, but the user gateway it firmly controls. After all, for most Robinhood users, it doesn't matter whether the order ultimately executes 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 critical resources in prediction markets — distribution capability. Since the users belong to them, why should the orders flow to someone else?

In fact, while Robinhood was rapidly validating prediction market demand through Kalshi, a Plan B was quietly being set in motion shortly after.

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

In January 2026, the transaction was completed. Robinhood and Susquehanna obtained 90% control of MIAXdx, along with a complete CFTC regulatory framework, including Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) licenses. Subsequently,MIAXdx was renamed Rothera Exchange, and its clearing house was rebranded Rothera Clearing.

At this point, Robinhood had acquired all core elements needed to independently operate prediction markets. The only missing piece was a mature product comparable to Kalshi's, but for a company with rich experience in internet product development, this was clearly not a difficult challenge.

Rothera's Opportunity: The World Cup

In June 2026, after about six months of accelerated development, the Rothera product gradually took shape, and Robinhood finally made the move that seemed almost inevitable — gradually shifting order flow originally directed to Kalshi into its own controlled system.

Robinhood deliberately chose an ideal launchpad for Rothera: the World Cup. For prediction markets, the World Cup is undoubtedly one of the most traffic-generating trading themes. Whether it's match outcomes, progression results, or the eventual champion, related markets can attract a large number of new users to engage in trading within a short period. For Rothera's newly launched platform, there was no better scenario for a cold start than the World Cup.

According to Robinhood's official disclosure, during this World Cup featuring a total of 104 matches, some event contracts will be directed to Rothera for matching and clearing, including markets for individual World Cup match results, the final World Cup champion, and total goals per match. Compared to the previous model that relied entirely on Kalshi, this marks the first time Robinhood has routed prediction market orders on a large scale into its proprietary trading system.

Looking at the results, Rothera clearly seized this opportunity. According to data disclosed by Hood House, a research-focused media outlet tracking Robinhood, Rothera completed 44.2 million contract trades on June 12, corresponding to a dollar trading volume of approximately $24.4 million; on June 13, Rothera completed 69.7 million contract trades, corresponding to a dollar volume of about $20.9 million. While these numbers lag behind Kalshi's popular markets, which often see hundreds of millions of dollars in volume, this performance is remarkably successful considering Rothera had only been live for a few days.

For Robinhood and Kalshi, this means the balance in their cooperation has begun to tilt. On Robinhood's side, the fee income 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 Robinhood and Kalshi have never publicly disclosed their revenue-sharing ratio, we cannot determine the exact value of this interception, but considering Robinhood generated $147 million in prediction market-related revenue in Q1 alone, and the Q2 World Cup and the upcoming midterm elections are likely to drive even larger trading activity, this intercepted value could potentially amount to several hundred million dollars on an annual basis.

Who Controls Distribution, Controls Everything

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

In recent years, the market generally believed Kalshi's core moat came from regulatory licenses, exchange qualifications, and clearing capabilities. Therefore, brokerages like Robinhood, as well as various media, communities, and traffic platforms, were essentially just channels and traffic gateways for Kalshi. However, the emergence of Rothera proves one thing: in today's highly commoditized product environment, the product itself might not be the most critical factor. What is truly scarce is always the user.

Where users are, liquidity follows; where liquidity is, markets exist. When Robinhood holds the gateway to tens of millions of retail users, it is fully capable of directing these users to any trading venue. For users, they don't care whether their order ultimately executes on Kalshi or Rothera — as long as the experience doesn't differ significantly, the identity of the matching and clearing provider behind the scenes is irrelevant.

If the past few years in the prediction market industry were defined by the market battle between Polymarket and Kalshi, then the coming years might be characterized by a channel war. Robinhood incubating Rothera is essentially a reverse integration initiated by the channel layer toward the market layer. As more platforms with traffic gateways begin to recognize the strategic value of prediction markets, similar stories will likely continue to unfold. Exchanges, brokerages, social platforms, and media platforms could all become new prediction market gateways.

And when gateways start controlling markets, and channels begin to hold 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.

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