Robinhood Event Contracts Outpace Crypto in Q3
Robinhood reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, revealing that its event contracts business generated $173 million in revenue, continuing to outpace its cryptocurrency trading segment.
According to Jose Antonio Lanz at Decrypt, Robinhood posted a record total revenue of $1.42 billion, though it narrowly missed Wall Street's $1.43 billion expectation. Earnings per share came in at $0.51, falling short of the projected $0.55 and down from $0.61 a year ago. Net income dropped 14% year-over-year to $476 million, impacted by a $67 million unrealized loss on the Robinhood Ventures Fund I.
Despite the overall earnings miss, the platform's prediction market offerings saw explosive retail engagement. Customers traded a record 16.4 billion event contracts during the quarter—more than seven times the volume recorded a year earlier. This surge pushed event contract revenue up from $156 million in the second quarter. By comparison, Robinhood's crypto trading revenue rose to $120 million for the quarter, remaining 55% below its Q3 2025 levels.
Competitors Launch Faster Markets
As Robinhood capitalizes on retail demand for event betting, competitors are rolling out increasingly rapid trading products. The Defiant Team at The Defiant reported that Polymarket has added five-minute crypto contracts to its U.S. application. These new high-frequency markets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP utilize CF Benchmarks for pricing, with taker fees charged separately from the spread. Traders looking to navigate these rapid contracts often rely on specialized analytics to track short-term volatility.
With billions of contracts traded across platforms, questions about market accuracy and political bias remain prevalent. However, recent historical research suggests these markets maintain neutrality. A working paper published on October 5 by Eric Zitzewitz at NBER analyzed prediction market returns from 1880 to 2025 and found no evidence of systematic overpricing for either left- or right-leaning candidates. While Zitzewitz noted a very small overpricing of left-leaning outcomes in near-term polling average markets, he concluded that election prediction markets yield forecasts without systematic bias, despite attracting participants who may not represent the broader voting population. Users comparing platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket can factor this historical neutrality into their trading strategies.