Breaking Vlad: Making Sense of Robinhood’s Crypto.com Curveball

Robinhood name-dropped its prediction market exchange 18 times during a July 29 second-quarter earnings presentation and 10 times in a subsequent call with analysts. Robinhood co-owns the entity, named Rothera, alongside Susquehanna International Group and Miami International Holdings through a purchase that closed earlier this year.

Rothera earned Robinhood’s praise by rapidly onboarding volume during the World Cup with few public hiccups just months after relaunching post-acquisition. For a time, Rothera eclipsed Crypto.com’s exchange subsidiary, then known as Nadex/CDNA, for third place in betting volume among all U.S. prediction market exchanges during the World Cup’s knockout rounds.

Not even two months later, Robinhood has bought into another shiny prediction market toy: the very exchange Rothera briefly surpassed in July.

By taking an equity stake in both Crypto.com and Crypto.com’s new prediction market spin-off OG, Robinhood gained a tie to the underlying exchange, which became an OG subsidiary in the corporate restructuring.

Robinhood, led by CEO Vlad Tenev, has framed its investment in OG as a product expansion rather than a move to supplant the exchange it spoke so glowingly about with investors in July. Robinhood will continue to route many bets through Rothera even as OG’s exchange gives it another option.