分发为王：Robinhood正在吞噬预测市场

Original Author: @Decentralisedco

Original Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

In a previous article, we explored how HIP-4 brings structured products to Hyperliquid. Robinhood has a similar operation, achieved through its recent foray into prediction markets. The table below provides some context.

Fidelity, Schwab, and Interactive Brokers grew in an era before prediction markets existed. Even spot cryptocurrencies account for only a small fraction of their overall product offerings. In contrast, Robinhood serves a younger demographic who might want to bet on sports events, go long on semiconductor stocks, actively trade Solana, while simultaneously holding a crude oil position in the futures market. A generation of users raised in a "monitoring the situation" environment will flock to platforms like Polymarket or Kalshi if Robinhood fails to offer the same risk assets.

One way to mitigate this risk is to offer event contracts. These are binary instruments that settle on a "Yes" or "No" outcome. Each contract is priced between $0 and $1, reflecting the market's real-time probability assessment of an event occurring. If you are correct, the contract settles at $1; if wrong, it settles at $0. The user's entry cost is the implied probability of the event. For example, a contract priced at $0.60 for the Strait of Hormuz being open by May 30 signals the market's belief. If most people are convinced something will happen, there is little room to profit from that specific event.

On Robinhood, these tools can serve as hedges. You could go long on the Strait of Hormuz being open while simultaneously going long on crude oil prices, assuming that if the strait is not open, oil prices will remain high.

Robinhood first launched its prediction markets business in March 2025, routing clients through KalshiEX. In nine months, users traded 12 billion contracts. Approximately 70% of the full-year volume was concentrated in the fourth quarter. In Q1 2026, Robinhood recorded 8.8 billion event contracts.

Over 1 million Robinhood clients traded event contracts in 2025. Instead of launching these markets and building liquidity itself, Robinhood directly integrated Kalshi's prediction markets. Robinhood acts as the distribution layer by providing its customers with a dashboard. The entire infrastructure, at least for now, is still supported by Kalshi (more on this later).

Kalshi and Polymarket dominate the market, accounting for over 90% of total prediction market volume. Robinhood distributes Kalshi's contracts to its 27.4 million funded users, who are invested across multiple asset classes including stocks, crypto, futures, and options. Kalshi is merely a prediction market platform and cannot match this distribution capability.

In fact, Robinhood contributed 50% of Kalshi's volume in its first year.

While Coinbase allows users to trade stocks, crypto, futures, and options (via the Deribit acquisition), it only launched prediction markets in January of this year. In contrast, Robinhood's prediction market business has been operating for over a year, generating an annualized revenue exceeding $415 million. Robinhood also has significantly more Monthly Active Users (MAUs) than Coinbase, with 13.5 million compared to Coinbase's 9.2 million.

Prediction markets on Robinhood can evolve further. Currently, they exist as a separate Hub within the app, somewhat disconnected from the rest of the platform. But soon, they could be cross-linked with assets like stocks, options, and crypto – Robinhood's stock traders could also directly purchase prediction market event contracts.

Imagine opening Nvidia's stock page before its earnings report. You see the usual information: stock price and options chain. But now, you also see an event contract next to it: "Will Nvidia surpass Q2 revenue estimates?" The contract is trading at $0.72, implying a 72% probability the market assigns to this outcome. You believe the market is underestimating demand for Nvidia's products.

In this scenario, Robinhood allows you to buy the stock, buy call options, or purchase 500 'Yes' contracts for $360 – netting a $140 profit if correct ($0.28 profit per contract × 500 contracts).

Robinhood places these three tools on the same screen, without needing to switch tabs.

As illustrated earlier with crude oil, you can also use these tools to hedge positions. You could bet on Nvidia beating expectations while shorting the stock to hedge your prediction market wager. Thus, Robinhood enables you to build a cross-asset hedging strategy on the same screen in under a minute.

So far, this integration on stock trading pages works well for Robinhood, but it's still leaving money on the table. This is about to change, as Robinhood is preparing for the next step.

Richer Context for Information Pricing

Robinhood's moat lies in providing users with all relevant information exactly when and where they need it. Gone are the days of buying Bitcoin on Coinbase, trading options on Deribit, holding stocks on Robinhood, and trading crude oil futures with IBKR. Users want to avoid switching contexts and platforms.

Once Robinhood embeds prediction markets into all asset pages, it transforms from a passive broker into an information-pricing platform. Beyond price and analyst ratings, Robinhood will offer real-time probability markets for events related to that stock. Event contracts reflect the real-time consensus of participants with skin in the game. These contracts help users make better decisions, even if they never trade a single prediction market contract.

Consider the Nvidia example again. The stock price at any given moment reflects the sentiment of those holding the underlying equity. Associated with equity are legal rights, shareholder reports, analyst Q&A sessions, and a framework for investor protection built over 400 years. But most of the time, traders might not care about these. The information they want to price might be "Will Nvidia beat revenue estimates?" In this case, prediction markets could arguably be a better source of pricing information than the stock price itself. Robinhood's attempt to bring derivatives, event contracts, and equities all under one roof is specifically designed to capture value from all users who might want to trade that event.

But Polymarket and Kalshi have been doing this for years. Where is Robinhood's moat? Why not simply integrate third-party markets into its interface to increase revenue, instead of owning these markets itself? Cross-selling and volume provide a clearer picture of the incentive structure.

Cross-Selling is Also a Regulatory Moat

In March 2026, two bipartisan bills were introduced aiming to ban sports-related event contracts at the federal level. There are also legal obstacles at the state level. This is an existential crisis for platforms like Kalshi – 89% of its fee revenue in 2025 came from sports-related event contracts. Approximately 60% of Polymarket's open interest also stems from sports-related event contracts.

If sports contracts face legal setbacks, Kalshi and Polymarket would be hit hardest. Without this dominant category, they can't support valuations exceeding $20 billion. Although Robinhood started with a heavy sports market focus, its cross-selling capability allows it to diversify revenue into stock and macro events (like earnings, Fed decisions, CPI data, and jobs reports).

For Robinhood, sports are just one line item in its revenue. For Kalshi, the sports category is almost everything. Any regulatory crackdown on sports-related markets could impact Kalshi and Polymarket's claims to valuations above $20 billion. Robinhood is now positioned higher up the value chain through a joint venture named Rothera.

In November 2025, Robinhood formed a joint venture called Rothera LLC. This JV subsequently acquired MIAXdx – a CFTC-registered Designated Contract Market (DCM), Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), and Swap Execution Facility (SEF). This fundamentally changes the economics, control, ownership, clearing, and settlement processes for event contracts.

Relying on Kalshi to offer event markets limited the types of contracts Robinhood could list on its prediction markets. Rothera gives Robinhood the ability to list any event contract at any time.

From an economic perspective, this likely means Robinhood can capture the penny currently going to Kalshi, potentially doubling the revenue from event contracts. If Robinhood can flow half of its event contract revenue through its own entity, its prediction market revenue could increase by 50% to $620 million at current rates.

There's reason for optimism regarding this JV, as the latest quarterly results disclosed that Robinhood has started investing in Rothera. Q1 2026 results included $14 million in JV-related costs. There's an additional small benefit: once prediction market contracts are routed through Rothera, the collateral backing open positions sits on Robinhood's balance sheet, adding interest income to its revenue. With the scale of collateral backing open interest reaching approximately $100 million, this could generate an additional $4-5 million annually.

Every trading platform has a simple mission: make traders move money as frequently as possible and charge a small fee on each transaction; or, let them park idle capital and keep the interest income. For Robinhood, it appears to be the latter strategy.

Robinhood's cross-selling moat through prediction markets is similar to the moat we previously argued Hyperliquid enjoys with its HIP-4 event contracts. Hyperliquid's unified risk engine integrates primitives like spot, perpetuals, deployment markets, and prediction markets, ensuring capital efficiency within a decentralized market. The same logic applies to Robinhood, albeit within a centralized market.

Kalshi lacks Robinhood's distribution moat across different asset classes. A standalone prediction market product is significantly less valuable than one embedded within all other trading products. Coinbase has just dipped its toes into prediction markets, while Robinhood's advantage of integrating its full asset stack with event contracts on one screen gives it a head start over Coinbase in this space.

Let the Numbers Speak

Any valuation discussion comparing Coinbase, Kalshi, and Robinhood is essentially trying to answer the same question: What is the lifetime value of a user on each platform? Kalshi might have fewer users, but they pay significantly higher fees. If Robinhood can match Kalshi's liquidity at a lower fee, the same user would transact entirely on Robinhood.

The market has recognized this difference. Kalshi and Robinhood trade at similar valuation multiples (15x), while Coinbase trades at a lower multiple of 7.5x. For Kalshi, prediction markets constitute 100% of its revenue. For Robinhood, it's only 7%. For Coinbase, the number is negligible.

Once Rothera is live, Robinhood can price its offerings more competitively than any standalone prediction market platform. It can slash Kalshi's fees, absorb the margin hit, but still grow because every prediction market user is also a potential customer for stocks, options, and crypto. Kalshi is not staying silent; it reportedly plans to launch crypto trading, starting with perpetuals. But transitioning from a prediction market to a multi-asset platform is far harder than integrating prediction markets into a multi-asset trading platform.

Robinhood has spent over a decade acquiring 27.4 million funded users and building deep liquidity, market maker relationships, compliance infrastructure, and user trust. Kalshi will have to start from scratch.

One way to understand the value of this business is to spin off Robinhood's prediction market business and take it public independently. If it has $415 million in ARR and the same growth trajectory, what would it be worth? The simplest answer is Kalshi's 15x multiple, implying a value of $6.2 billion. But all else being equal, a Kalshi with Robinhood's revenue stream would command a much higher valuation.

We built a three-year projection model using the following assumptions:

• Contract Volume: 70 billion event contracts in 2028 under the base case scenario. This assumes a CAGR of approximately 40% over the next two years, based on Robinhood already recording 8.8 billion in Q1 of this year (annualized ~35 billion).
• Rothera Economics: We expect effective revenue per contract to rise from $0.01 to $0.015 under a bearish scenario, or $0.02 under base/bullish scenarios (after three years).
• Cross-Selling Boost: A multiplier of 1.0x in 2026 (cross-linking not yet live), 1.1x in 2027 (initial integration on stock pages), and 1.2x in 2028 (mature adoption). This assumes cross-selling adds only 10-20% incremental volume on top of organic prediction market growth.
• Robinhood Total Revenue: Using consensus estimates, $5.4 billion in 2026, $6.4 billion in 2027, and $7.2 billion in 2028.

We then stress-tested the 2028 projections under bear, base, and bull scenarios.

Even in the bear case scenario, Robinhood's prediction market revenue alone would reach $825 million in 2028, over three times Kalshi's 2025 revenue ($260 million). Using Kalshi's current revenue multiple (15x), Robinhood's prediction market business would be worth $12 billion in this scenario. In the most optimistic scenario, it could be worth $30 billion by 2028.

What we are likely witnessing is a business with a distribution moat pioneering a new market and capturing most of the value for itself. The open question is whether Polymarket and Kalshi are a repeat of OpenSea in 2021, or if they can successfully reinvent themselves in the face of new threats. Polymarket has recently expanded its perpetual products, but its users are unlikely to pivot to perpetual trading because prediction markets were their primary reason for being there. In contrast, Robinhood benefits from a core user base that has always come for its high-risk, zero-fee trading tools. The latter seems to have the upper hand.

Today, the market views Robinhood as a traditional financial broker with an add-on prediction market product, which is why prediction markets only account for 7% of its revenue. But if Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev delivers on his stated vision, Robinhood will become a platform that prices every financial view on earnings, interest rates, elections, and commodities in real-time, while also facilitating trades in the assets driven by those views.

A standalone prediction market only attracts those already trading event contracts. In contrast, a prediction market integrated into a retail broker becomes an information-pricing machine for everyone else. The vertical integration of capital aggregators is ubiquitous.