Robinhood Markets is seeing rising demand for prediction-market contracts tied to Bitcoin, gold and crude oil, as traders increasingly use the products to speculate on financial markets rather than on sports or elections.

JB Mackenzie, Robinhood's Vice President and General Manager for Futures and Prediction Markets, said the contracts have ranked among the platform's fastest-growing products, although sports remained its largest category.

“Price volatility contracts, such as bitcoin, crude oil, gold, start to dominate the marketplace,” Mackenzie said at the NEXTPredict conference in New York.

Prediction markets allow participants to trade contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, with prices reflecting the perceived probability of each result. At Robinhood, the shift toward financial themes is expanding the event-contract business beyond traditional betting markets. The platform's largest event contract in September 2026 was tied to the Federal Reserve's interest-rate decision, highlighting demand for contracts linked to economic policy.

Crypto-related contracts are also moving toward shorter trading windows, with some settling in as little as 15 minutes. Mackenzie compared the risks of such instruments to zero-day options, which expire on the same trading day and can expose traders to rapid losses.

Robinhood entered prediction markets through a partnership with Kalshi, an exchange federally regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and has used the products to attract customers to its broader platform, which spans stocks, cryptocurrencies, futures and options. The CFTC regulates derivatives and futures markets in the United States, while sports betting falls under state-level gambling oversight.

The expansion comes as sports-related prediction contracts face legal challenges from state gambling regulators, potentially increasing the importance of financial-market contracts as a source of growth for the company How those disputes are resolved could shape the mix of contracts driving the category's growth going forward.

Mackenzie said prediction markets could become Robinhood's fastest-growing business segment among 11 business lines that each generate more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Source: BitcoinKE