Robinhood teams up with Kalshi to launch prediction markets hub focusing on politics, economics and sports

The crypto-friendly financial trading platform Robinhood has launched a prediction markets hub within its app via Robinhood Derivatives, the firm's futures-focused subsidiary.

Robinhood's new prediction markets will first center on politics, economics and sports, with the firm planning to widen prediction coverage in the future, Robinhood CEO and Co-Founder Vladimir Tenev wrote on the social media platform X. 

The firm behind the U.S.-based prediction market Kalshi will facilitate Robinhood's new prediction markets hub and its associated contracts, Robinhood wrote in a Monday release. 

"At the most fundamental level, [prediction markets] are the application of capitalism to the pursuit of truth," Tenev said on X. "Market incentives and the wisdom of the crowds sift through all the information out there to determine answers to well-specified questions and outcomes to important events — sometimes even before they happen." 

This isn't the first time Robinhood Derivatives offered futures contracts, especially on politics. The platform allowed users to wager on the outcome of the 2024 United States Presidential Election,  competing against the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket and U.S.-based prediction market Kalshi .

The 2024 US Presidential Election drew record levels of trader interest. On Polymarket alone, the trading volume betting on whether Donald J. Trump or Kamala Harris would win the presidency crossed $3 billion on Nov. 4, 2024. 

The Block reached out to Robinhood for comment on its new prediction markets hub. 

Who will offer Robinhood's contracts? 

Kalshi, which is powering the project, "is federally regulated as a Designated Contract Market by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)," the company noted on its website. 

"The prediction markets hub–and corresponding contracts–will initially be available across the US through KalshiEX LLC, a CFTC regulated exchange," Robinhood said in its Monday statement. "We have been in close contact with the CFTC over the past several weeks and look forward to continuing to work with them to promote innovation in the futures, derivatives and crypto markets." 

However, Kalshi and the CFTC have litigated in court whether Kalshi can offer contracts betting on U.S. election outcomes. Especially ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the CFTC argued that such offerings can undermine election integrity. However, a federal appeals court judge permitted Kalshi to list election contracts in early October 2024, stating that CFTC did not show how such contracts would cause "irreparable injury" to the public, The Block previously reported. 

More recently, the CFTC probed Kalshi as well as the crypto exchange Crypto.com over the regulatory compliance of their Super Bowl derivatives prediction market in early February 2025.