Robinhood Crypto Volume Falls 48% As Event Contracts Double

Crypto trading on Robinhood fell by almost half from a year ago in October, the company said Thursday, as customers traded $17 billion of digital assets while their bets on event contracts more than doubled.

The $17 billion figure was down 21% from September and 48% from October 2025, when crypto notional volume reached $32.5 billion. It covers both the flagship Robinhood app and Bitstamp, the crypto exchange the company bought in 2025.

Volume in the Robinhood app fell to $6.8 billion, down 24% from September and 51% from a year earlier. Bitstamp handled $10.2 billion, down 18% month over month and 45% year over year.

Average daily crypto volume across both platforms came to $548 million, compared with $713 million in September and about $1.05 billion a year ago. Daily average crypto trades slipped to about 700,000 from 900,000 in September and 1.1 million in October 2025.

Event contracts take off as crypto cools

The contrast with Robinhood's prediction markets business is stark. Customers traded 5.9 billion event contracts in October, up 5% from September and 136% from the 2.5 billion traded a year earlier. Average daily volume reached 190 million contracts.

Robinhood counts crypto and prediction markets on the same 31-day calendar, since both trade every day, so the comparison is apples to apples. Event contracts let users bet on outcomes such as elections, sports and economic data, and October's tally covered the final weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

That growth has drawn scrutiny in Washington. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is set to chair the Senate Banking Committee in January, plans to crack down on prediction markets and election betting platforms.

The rest of Robinhood's brokerage held up better than crypto. Equity notional volume rose 2% from a year earlier to $325 billion, and options contracts traded climbed 8% to 289 million. Margin balances reached $22.9 billion, up 39% year over year.

Funded customers rose by about 130,000 in the month to 28.9 million, and net deposits came to $15.1 billion. Total platform assets slipped 3% from September to $383 billion but were up 12% from a year earlier.

Robinhood did not say why crypto activity fell. The release, like all of the company's monthly updates, is unaudited and preliminary.

Retail pulls back as bitcoin slides

The slump in Robinhood's crypto numbers lines up with a broader retreat by retail traders. Bitcoin ended September near $83,500 and has slid since, falling below $70,000 early Friday for the first time since August as a hot inflation report raised bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike in December.

Institutional demand has cooled alongside it. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds posted a sixth straight day of net outflows on Thursday, and BlackRock's IBIT, the largest of them, bled about $2 billion over nine sessions through Wednesday. Spot bitcoin ETFs have now erased their net inflows for 2026.

Crypto trading generates transaction revenue for Robinhood, so lower volume generally means fewer fees, even when assets on the platform keep growing. The company reports full fourth-quarter results early next year, and October's figures are the first look at how the quarter started.

The company has kept expanding its crypto footprint anyway. In October, Robinhood won a license in Dubai to offer bitcoin and stock trading in the Middle East starting in 2027.

Robinhood also said cash and deposit balances fell 20% in October to $16.4 billion, mostly because customers were net buyers, and that the decline has largely reversed in early November. November's operating data will show whether this month's selloff below $70,000 brought crypto traders back or pushed more of them toward event contracts.

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