For a year, Kalshi relied on Robinhood as its largest distributor.
Then Robinhood quietly acquired a CFTC-licensed exchange, MIAXdx, formerly LedgerX, partnering with Susquehanna International Group to rebrand it as Rothera.
This move gave Robinhood its own regulated platform for event contracts and started a shift in how it routes order flow.
In late May, Robinhood began migrating contracts gradually, launching economic data and baseball markets, followed by World Cup event markets which went live on June 11.
High-volume markets such as match outcomes and tournament winners now route through Rothera, while player props and parlays remain on Kalshi for the time being.
The company’s CFO has indicated most flow will eventually migrate to Rothera.
The scale of this change is striking: Robinhood processed over 16 billion event contracts so far this year, surpassing 12 billion projected for all of 2025.
Event-contract revenues hit $147 million in a single quarter, already outpacing Robinhood's crypto business.
Two days ago, reports showed Robinhood in talks with Crypto.com to add its contracts onto Rothera, signaling ambitions beyond owning a single exchange.
This illustrates a well-known pattern in platform businesses: distributors initially promote a supplier’s product then build or acquire that supplier’s function to capture margins directly.
Amazon did this with merchants, Netflix with studios, and now Robinhood is repeating the cycle with prediction markets.
Robinhood introduced Kalshi’s markets to millions of retail users but has since shifted core flows to its own licensed exchange, shrinking its customers’ share on Kalshi.
The World Cup proved a testing ground for this migration.
Robinhood’s maneuver reveals where real value lies in prediction markets: owning the platform infrastructure and customer access, not just the contracts themselves.
This material is informational and not financial advice.
