Robinhood Says Bitcoin, Gold and Oil Are Its…

Robinhood is seeing prediction-market demand rotate toward financial price contracts, with bitcoin, gold and crude oil among the fastest-growing products in a business that has become a significant revenue line for the brokerage. JB Mackenzie, Robinhood's vice president and general manager for futures and prediction markets, described the shift during an appearance at the NEXTPredict conference in New York.

Sports remains the platform's largest prediction-market category, Mackenzie said, but contracts tied to market prices are closing the gap. "We've now started to see price volatility contracts, such as bitcoin, crude oil, gold, start to dominate the marketplace, and they're the fastest growing products that are out there," he said. Robinhood did not release asset-by-asset volumes or growth rates alongside the remarks, so the ranking reflects management's characterization rather than independently disclosed category data.

Beyond elections and sports

Financial event contracts let customers take a binary position on a measurable outcome — for example, whether bitcoin will trade above a set price at a given time — rather than buying the asset or a conventional derivative. The same structure applies to gold, crude oil, interest rates and inflation. Mackenzie said the largest single event contract on Robinhood in September was tied to the Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision, not a sporting event.

Settlement windows are also compressing. Crypto contracts began with weekly expirations, moved to daily, and some now settle in as little as 15 minutes. Mackenzie likened the risk profile to zero-day options, though the instruments differ structurally: a binary contract has a predefined outcome and bounded payoff, while an option's value derives from the underlying, strike, volatility and time to expiry. The common thread is the compressed trading horizon, which leaves little room for a position to recover from an adverse move.

The financial stakes are considerable. Robinhood generated $156 million from event contracts in the second quarter of 2026, more than its transaction-based revenue from equities or cryptocurrencies in the period, on 13.6 billion contracts traded. Mackenzie said Robinhood now runs 11 businesses each generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, and called prediction markets potentially the fastest-growing of them. He added that customers drawn in by event contracts often expand into equities, crypto, futures, options and retirement products, making the unit an acquisition channel as well as a revenue source.

The diversification also comes as sports event contracts face legal challenges from U.S. states and tribal gaming interests over whether federally regulated derivatives can function as sports betting. Financial contracts carry their own regulatory risk, but offer a growth path less directly exposed to that dispute. Robinhood has meanwhile added regulated trading and clearing relationships rather than relying on a single venue.