From bitcoin to Bad Bunny

Crypto is losing steam, and Robinhood is looking for its next growth engine.

The brokerage app delivered a mixed fourth quarter last night, topping profit estimates but falling short on sales even as revenue climbed 27% from a year ago to an all-time high. The stock dropped 8.8% today.

The sales shortfall was largely tied to a slowdown in crypto trading, where transaction revenue tumbled 38% as traders pulled back from speculative bets like bitcoin amid macro jitters. Luckily for Robinhood shareholders, investors are turning their attention beyond crypto and into prediction markets.

The company is expanding further into event-based contracts, aiming to capture a shift in user demand as the line between investing and gambling continues to erode. Its prediction markets hub, introduced last year, has surpassed 12 billion contracts traded in 2025, with activity more than doubling last quarter.

Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev sees the trend as structural, describing the current environment as the start of a “prediction market super cycle.” Even though the NFL season and its multitude of betting opportunities has concluded, he pointed to global spectacles like the Olympics and the World Cup as catalysts for sustained engagement with Robinhood’s prediction markets in the year ahead.

Where every moment has a price

Speaking of football, this year’s Super Bowl drove unprecedented betting activity across event-trading platforms. Kalshi logged more than $1 billion in contracts tied to the big game, including $871 million traded on Sunday alone—about 60% higher than its prior single-day record—and $100 million on which song Bad Bunny would sing first during halftime.

It may sound like entertainment, but there’s evidence these markets are doing more than generating buzz.

A recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, over Kalshi’s five-year history, its traders have matched professional economists in forecasting key economic data, including interest rate decisions. In some cases, they’ve even outperformed them.

Prediction markets have also shown greater accuracy than Wall Street analysts in estimating inflation and corporate earnings. At one point this year, prediction market traders signaled Kevin Warsh as the leading candidate to become President Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve chair—ahead of many traditional forecasts.

If this keeps up, Robinhood users might accidentally become the Fed’s unofficial advisory board.—SY