Robinhood CEO Says Crypto Will Beat Sports at Prediction Markets' Own Game

In brief

• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes crypto categories are taking a “disproportionate share” of Robinhood's prediction markets, and could push sports into the minority within a few years.
• Robinhood's event-contract revenue surged more than tenfold year over year to $156 million in Q2 2026.
• Contracts traded 4.7 billion times in August alone—about 15 times August 2025's volume.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev thinks crypto is about to do to sports betting what Robinhood once did to Wall Street commissions: eat its lunch.

Speaking with Jim Cramer on CNBC's "Mad Money," Tenev said crypto-linked contracts are already grabbing an outsized slice of Robinhood's prediction markets business. He expects sports wagers to fall into the minority within a few years.

Prediction markets, also called event contracts, let people trade yes-or-no bets on whether something will actually happen—a Federal Reserve rate decision, an election, a football game—instead of placing a wager through a sportsbook. The trades are regulated as derivatives by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that also oversees futures and options, which is the exact distinction Tenev leans on to argue this isn't just gambling with better branding.