Robinhood shares up 8% after launching betting markets hub

Robinhood has launched a betting markets hub as the online brokerage — best known for stock trading — expands its presence in emergent asset classes, including cryptocurrencies and event contracts, according to a March 17 announcement. 

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

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. 

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

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,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, said 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.

Related: Robinhood tips Singapore launch, touts memecoin interest: Report

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.

Beyond stock trading

Robinhood has been expanding its footprint in emerging asset classes, including cryptocurrencies and derivatives. 

On March 13, the company listed memecoins like Pengu (PENGU), Pnut (PNUT) and Popcat (POPCAT) in a bid to expand its presence in crypto. Back in January, it rolled out futures contracts tied to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC).

Robihood’s latest earnings report shows the firm posted a 700% year-over-year jump in crypto revenues in the fourth quarter of 2024 as Trump’s election win and rising market prices fueled boosted crypto trading.

X Hall of Flame: Memecoins will die and DeFi will rise again — Sasha Ivanov