Robinhood's event contracts more than doubled to 5.9 billion in October as crypto volume nearly halved

Robinhood's▼−5.68% — Robinhood, down 5.68 percent today October report↗ counts contracts, not dollars, and the count flatters the line Robinhood owns least: event-contract trading, its prediction-market business, more than doubled from a year earlier while crypto volume nearly halved to $17 billion ¹. The only business still compounding runs mostly on an exchange Robinhood does not control, and the exchange's half of its fee leaves the group ².

A two-cent fee decides what the volume is worth

Each event contract carries a two-cent fee, split between broker and exchange. On trades routed to Kalshi, the dominant sports prediction venue, Robinhood keeps the broker's cent and Kalshi keeps the exchange's ²³. On Rothera, the exchange Robinhood runs with Susquehanna, both cents stay inside the group ². The same contract is worth twice as much on Robinhood's own venue: routing, not volume, sets the revenue. Event contracts earned Robinhood $173 million in the third quarter, six times the year before, and passed crypto as a revenue contributor ⁴. Crypto revenue fell 55% over the same period ⁴.

Most of that flow still runs through Kalshi

InGame's estimate↗ put Kalshi's share of Robinhood's prediction volume at about 60% this summer, and still called it the majority after third-quarter results ². On November 10, Politico reported↗ that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has warned Kalshi that charges could come soon, over whether it properly notified the agency about dozens of new products; Kalshi calls it a procedural error, mostly involving contracts that never went live ⁵.

The exit is scheduled, not finished: chief financial officer Shiv Verma said the vast majority of Robinhood's flow reaches Rothera and a second venue by early 2027 ². Rothera passed $100 million of annualized revenue in its first full quarter ².

As reported, the case is paperwork. If it widened, it would land on most of Robinhood's prediction trading; if it hurried the migration, Robinhood collects two cents a contract where it now collects one.

The rest of the file leans the other way

Nothing else in October supports a growth multiple. Platform assets fell 3% from September, and securities lending revenue dropped 43% ¹. Margin balances rose 39%, and $15.1 billion of net deposits say customers are still bringing money ¹. Robinhood closed at $81.35 on November 12, slid overnight as bitcoin broke below $70,000, and trades at about 26 times forward earnings ²⁶.

Volume is not revenue: the routing is. The October file publishes no routing split, so the best public number on what Robinhood bills is a third-party estimate ¹². Whoever holds Robinhood into a fourth quarter built on event-contract scale is underwriting Kalshi's housekeeping until the plumbing comes home, and the work worth paying for is the migration: Rothera turning traded contracts into kept cents.