Robinhood Launches Betting Markets Hub as It Expands Into New Asset Classes

The online brokerage — best known for stock trading — expands its presence in emergent asset classes, including cryptocurrencies and event contracts

Online brokerage Robinhood is launching a betting markets hub as it expands its presence in emergent asset classes, including cryptocurrencies and event contracts.

The new betting feature will let users “trade contracts for what the upper bound of the target fed funds rate will be in May, as well as the upcoming men’s and women’s College Basketball Tournaments,” it said in an email to Chain Link.

The online brokerage is tapping Kalshi, the US’ first CFTC-regulated prediction platform, to operate the event contract platform, it added.

Kalshi is already registered to list dozens of event contracts, covering outcomes ranging from election results to Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings.

Prediction markets “play an important role at the intersection of news, economics, politics, sports, and culture,” said JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, in a statement.

Experts say political betting markets often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket accurately predicted US President Donald Trump’s November election win even as polls indicated a tossup.

Rising popularity

Prediction markets have become increasingly popular in the US since September 2024, when Kalshi prevailed in a lawsuit challenging a CFTC decision to bar it from listing political event contracts.

By November, trading volumes across popular prediction markets neared $4 billion for contracts tied to the US elections.

Robinhood tested the waters of political event contracts in October when it started letting certain users bet on the outcome of the presidential election between former Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump.

In February, Robinhood suspended Super Bowl betting after receiving a request from the CFTC to nix its customers’ access to the event contracts.

The move came as the US futures regulator is examining the legal and regulatory implications of allowing retail platforms to offer event contracts.

The clocks are ticking

The online brokerage is expanding its offerings as it faces pressure to diversify revenue streams amid a challenging macroeconomic climate.

Last year, the firm encountered setbacks in its bid to launch futures trading in August and expand into Canada in December. It also scrapped plans to introduce yield products in December.

The company’s stock, HOOD, rose roughly 8% on the Nasdaq after the announcement, according to data from Google Finance.