Robinhood ships sleep-trading AI agents and 10x crypto leverage as the CFTC opens a 60-day comment window
Five days after Robinhood stacked 10x crypto perps, doubled intraday margin and self-running AI loops into retail accounts, the CFTC opened a comment window on registering exactly that leveraged shelf, and Ohio set a October 16 deadline on the sports contracts that earned $156 million last quarter. Results land October 27.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
An agent that trades while the customer sleeps
Robinhood now sells the part of trading that used to require a person awake. Name an AI agent in the app, pick a model from providers including OpenAI, fund a dedicated account, switch the approval setting off, and the agent can place, modify and cancel orders while the customer is away from the device. Robinhood calls the standing versions Loops, unveiled September 29 at its Houston summit, with weekend equities trading to follow early next year. 12
More than 150,000 customers have opened agentic accounts since May, and agents already hit Robinhood's tools nearly 30 million times a day, the company said. 1
Hedge-fund leverage, retail accounts
The same release stacked the shelf behind the Loops: BTC and ETH perpetual futures at up to 10x leverage, 3x on six other coins, routed through Bitstamp at one basis point per trade through 2026. Intraday buying power doubles to 4x, up from 2x, for eligible margin customers who opt in beginning in October. Binary earnings contracts via Cboe pay $1 when a metric in an SEC filing clears a bar. 1
Vlad Tenev pitched the lineup as "tools once reserved for hedge funds, big banks, and quant firms," and the pricing is promotional: no contract fees on the earnings products, free agent usage through 2026, one basis point on the perps. 1 The customers are practiced risk-takers: Robinhood Chain pools pairing stock tokens with memecoins peaked near $440 million a day in early September. 3
The rulebook arrived five days later
On October 5, 2026, the CFTC opened a 60-day comment window on an advance notice covering leveraged, margined or financed retail crypto trades, with a proposed "crypto asset market" registration category built on existing Commodity Exchange Act authority. 456 The Clarity Act, which would have given the CFTC broader authority, stalled in September on a 49-50 Senate procedural vote. 56 No single leverage limit is set; each arrangement would need CFTC clearance. 6
Its subject is the shelf Robinhood stocked five days earlier, and coverage of the notice puts the 10x contracts in its path. 4
Ohio gives the prediction business two weeks
A second clock targets the prediction business: Ohio ordered Robinhood and nine other operators on October 2 to stop offering sports event contracts by October 16, after a federal appeals court ruled such contracts are not swaps, as The Inference charted on October 1. 7 The state threatened fines equal to the money operators took in. 7
Event contracts passed crypto as Robinhood's second-biggest transaction line
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Options | $342M |
| Event contracts | $156M |
| Equities | $129M |
| Crypto | $100M |
The numbers under the clocks
Event contracts earned $156 million in Q2 on a record 13.6 billion contracts, passing equities and crypto, while crypto transaction revenue fell for a third straight quarter, from $268 million to $100 million, a hole the perps are positioned to refill. 8 Total revenue reached $1.31 billion, up 32 percent, and Bank of America lifted its target to $156 from $140 against a $114.11 close, with results due October 27. 910
Robinhood's quarterly revenue has nearly tripled in three years
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '23 | $0.47B |
| Q4 '23 | $0.47B |
| Q1 '24 | $0.62B |
| Q2 '24 | $0.68B |
| Q3 '24 | $0.64B |
| Q4 '24 | $1.01B |
| Q1 '25 | $0.93B |
| Q2 '25 | $0.99B |
| Q3 '25 | $1.27B |
| Q4 '25 | $1.28B |
| Q1 '26 | $1.07B |
| Q2 '26 | $1.31B |
The guardrails are settings
Every safeguard Robinhood lists is a switch: approvals default on, agents sit in a funded sub-account, Loops pause on command, and customers "remain responsible for the automation rules they configure." 1 Better Markets argues the CFTC is the wrong agency for retail crypto, lacking securities-style investor protections. 6
On unattended agents, Fortune's Jeff John Roberts put it flatly: "not everyone's going to use those guard rails." 11
Three dates
Ohio answers on October 16, the quarter on October 27, where event-contract revenue against Q2's $156 million and any first numbers on perps or agents decide whether the raise holds. 789 Robinhood priced the new products near zero; the rulebook decides what they cost.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
