Despite building its own prediction exchange, Robinhood won’t move on from Kalshi any time soon; A meaningful pullback would only shave an estimated 10-15% max of Kalshi volume.
For much of 2025, Kalshi’s rise as the first scaled, regulated U.S. prediction market platform was closely tied to Robinhood. When the retail brokerage launched event contracts inside its app in March of 2025, routing trades to Kalshi as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), Kalshi’s trading volumes surged.
That relationship could now face a potentially consequential test. On January 21, it was announced that Miami International Holdings had completed the sale of MIAX Derivatives Exchange (MIAXdx) through a joint venture formed by Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group (SIG), a major global trading firm that also serves as one of Kalshi’s primary market makers and liquidity providers. As part of the deal, Miami International Holdings will retain a 10% ownership stake in MIAXdx.
Like Kalshi, MIAXdx is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as both a Designated Contract Market (DCM) and a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), giving Robinhood the ability to list and clear event contracts without relying on a third-party exchange.
“The purchase of MIAXdx accelerates our investment in the prediction markets and improves our position to deliver a better experience for customers in this growing asset class,” said JB Mackenzie, Robinhood’s vice president and general manager of futures and international, in the announcement.
The move raises a central question for Kalshi. If Robinhood gradually internalizes more of its prediction markets via MIAXdx, how much of Kalshi’s current trading volume is realistically at risk?
A Robinhood spokesperson told DeFi Rate that the new exchange is expected to begin operations sometime in 2026, but that no more precise timeline is currently available.
How dependent has Kalshi volume been on Robinhood?
Robinhood’s impact on Kalshi was immediate and substantial.
On its Q2 2025 earnings call, Robinhood disclosed that users traded roughly $1 billion in event contracts during the quarter, generating about $10 million in revenue from per-contract fees. At the time, Kalshi’s total quarterly volume was under $2 billion, leading industry observers to estimate that Robinhood accounted for more than half of Kalshi’s trading during peak periods in mid-2025.
That share, however, did not persist. Kalshi has never disclosed partner-level volume figures, but later reporting painted a more balanced picture. In October, according to Reuters, Piper Sandler analysts estimated that Robinhood users accounted for roughly 25%-35% of Kalshi’s daily trading volume. Reuters described Robinhood as a major distribution partner, but no longer the dominant one, reflecting the growth of Kalshi’s own app.
While it would make sense for Robinhood to eventually prioritize markets listed on its own exchange, there are no signs of an imminent shift away from Kalshi. The Robinhood spokesperson told DeFi Rate that the platform will continue its partnerships with DCMs like Kalshi. In fact, it’s looking to extend those types of alliances, signaling that MIAXdx will be an addition, not a replacement for those partnerships.
“Robinhood has maintained relationships with multiple exchanges since the inception of Prediction Markets,” the spokesperson wrote. “Robinhood Derivatives plans to continue to partner with multiple DCM/DCO partners, supporting access to a diversity of market venues for our customers.”
How much Kalshi volume could actually be at risk?
Based on the Piper Sandler estimates, Robinhood likely accounts for roughly 25%-35% of Kalshi’s daily trading volume. If Robinhood were to offer fewer Kalshi-listed contracts over time and instead internalize some prediction market activity through MIAXdx, the potential impact would likely be incremental.
In a hypothetical scenario where Robinhood internalizes roughly half of the volume it currently routes to Kalshi, the resulting reduction would equate to approximately 10%-15% of Kalshi’s total daily trading volume, based on the analyst estimates. In weekly trading volume, that could translate into a dent in the range of $225-$340M based on current figures, or more depending when Robinhood takes its prediction markets in-house.
A 10%-15% decline would be a slight setback in the near term. But even under that scenario, Kalshi would still retain the vast majority of its trading volume, keeping the impact well short of existential.
How Kalshi could replace lost liquidity and revenue
Even if Robinhood were to eventually reduce or eliminate the volume it routes to Kalshi, the exchange has already shown that its growth is not dependent on any single distributor. As Robinhood’s share of Kalshi trading declined from a majority position in mid-2025 to roughly 30% later in the year, overall activity on the exchange continued to expand, driven by growth across sports, economic, and other event-based contracts, as well as an expanding base of direct users.
That trend reflects a deliberate effort by Kalshi to diversify its distribution across fintech platforms rather than rely on a single retail channel. The company has focused on integrating its prediction markets into existing brokerage and crypto platforms, allowing Kalshi to scale by placing prediction markets inside platforms like Robinhood where users already manage money and trade through familiar interfaces.
In an October 2025 interview with Reuters, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said the company was actively looking to expand third-party integrations and viewed broker partnerships as a scalable way to grow access. Speaking at the Solana Accelerate conference last May, Mansour said, “I think within the next year and a half I would say most mainstream financial brokerages like where you have your 401(k)s and others will have access to Kalshi’s products or prediction markets in app.”
That strategy has extended beyond traditional brokerages into crypto platforms. Since joining Kalshi as head of crypto, John Wang has emphasized embedding prediction markets directly into the apps where users already trade digital assets.
“Six months for Kalshi to be in every major crypto app or I have failed at my job,” Wang wrote in a December post on X, outlining an aggressive push to distribute Kalshi contracts through third-party crypto platforms.
One of the most immediate ways for Kalshi to offset any potential volume loss is further fintech partner diversification. There are a number of consumer-facing platforms where its regulated prediction markets are (or will be) available, including Webull, Coinbase and popular crypto wallet app Phantom.
While no single partner matches Robinhood’s scale, the cumulative impact of multiple mid-size brokerage, exchange, and wallet integrations could collectively replace a meaningful share of any lost volume over time.
Kalshi’s growth does not hinge on Robinhood
Beyond distribution strategy, the clearest way Kalshi can offset any potential reduction in Robinhood-routed volume is by continuing to grow its own trading activity. That growth has been quite evident in recent months. Kalshi generated $2.26 billion in trading volume last week, up 4.9% week over week. The run of record or near-record weekly and monthly volume suggests Kalshi’s momentum is being driven by demand on the exchange itself, not just by any single distribution partner.
Those gains reflect more than a short-term spike. Kalshi’s volume growth has been supported by a broader mix of contract categories, higher presence and engagement around events, and expanding participation.
For traders, that dynamic points to a market that is becoming deeper and more competitive. As Kalshi’s liquidity grows and its markets remain accessible across multiple fintech platforms, traders are likely to benefit from better execution, tighter pricing, and more choice, as competition increases among platforms, including Kalshi and Robinhood’s forthcoming exchange.
