Robinhood’s Crypto Volume Surges 61% in August but Still 38% Below Last Year

Robinhood’s crypto numbers bounced back hard in August. Total crypto trading volume hit $17.5 billion, a 61% jump from July’s $10.9 billion. But that’s still well below the $28.1 billion the platform moved in August of last year — down 38% year over year, which is a gap that’s hard to spin away.

Where the Volume Actually Came From

The breakdown matters here. Robinhood’s own app generated $7.4 billion of that August total — a 72% monthly gain, but still 46% behind the same month a year ago. Bitstamp, which Robinhood acquired in 2025, pulled in $10.1 billion, a 53% increase from July. Combined, both platforms averaged $565 million in daily crypto trading through August. That’s a real number. Not spectacular, but real.

And crypto, for all the attention it gets, is still pretty much a side act at Robinhood. The platform’s total assets sat at $384 billion at last count — up 26% year over year. Funded customer count reached 28.6 million. Margin loans hit $21.5 billion, growing 72% from the prior year. So the broader business is moving fast. Crypto just isn’t the engine driving it.

Event Contracts Are Now the Real Story

Here’s the thing that probably surprised most people looking at August’s numbers: event contracts are basically eating crypto’s lunch inside Robinhood’s own house.

August saw 4.7 billion event contracts traded. That’s down 23% from July — so not a clean month. But it’s 15 times the volume recorded in August of last year. Fifteen times. These contracts cover stuff like Federal Reserve rate decisions and sports outcomes, and they’ve quietly become Robinhood’s most important revenue line. Event contract revenue cleared $156 million in the latest quarter, which puts it ahead of crypto income. That’s a pretty significant flip for a company that built a lot of its retail identity around zero-commission stock and crypto trading.

The growth hasn’t gone unnoticed in Washington. More than 10 legislative bills have been introduced since January targeting prediction markets specifically. One of them, the PREDICT Act, takes direct aim at political event contract trading by senior government officials. The concern is conflict of interest — officials trading contracts tied to decisions they’re involved in making. Regulatory scrutiny in this space is growing fast, and Robinhood’s sitting right in the middle of it.

Robinhood’s prediction market operations run through several partner exchanges, including Kalshi and ForecastEx, plus Rothera, a joint venture. Together, those operations have processed more than 3.5 billion contracts since June. That’s a lot of volume to have built up in a relatively short window.

Related: Robinhood Crypto Soars to $10.1B in August Despite 46% App Trading Drop

And Kalshi just made things more complicated. The exchange — which is a key partner for Robinhood’s event contracts — plans to seek regulatory approval to offer single-stock perpetual futures in the US. If that goes through, Kalshi moves from supplier to something closer to a competitor, at least on the trading side. It’s unclear exactly how that reshapes the relationship, but it’s probably not a nothing development for Robinhood’s core business.

Robinhood Chain Picks Up Speed

Separate from the trading volume data, Robinhood Chain — the company’s Ethereum layer 2 network — logged $1.6 billion in daily trading volume on decentralized exchanges by early September. That was up 61% in just four days. Short window, but a sharp move.

Decentralized finance has been gaining ground across the broader industry for a while now, and Robinhood seems to be positioning Robinhood Chain as part of that story. Whether it becomes a meaningful revenue driver or stays more of a brand play is unclear yet. But the early traction is there.

Robinhood’s stock, for its part, fell 0.83% on Thursday following the data release. Analysts have recently raised their price targets on the company based on overall growth potential, so the dip doesn’t seem to reflect a broader loss of confidence. The company’s next earnings report is set for November 4, which will give a cleaner read on how all these moving pieces — crypto, event contracts, Robinhood Chain — are actually landing on the income statement.

Read also: ETHFI Leads Crypto Gainers with 7.8% Surge Despite Market Dip

The event contract business has grown fast enough that it’s now the leading source of transaction income at Robinhood, ahead of crypto. That’s a sentence that would’ve seemed strange two years ago. The company’s processed billions of contracts through Rothera alone since June, and the legislative pressure building around the sector means Robinhood’s probably going to spend more time talking to lawyers and lobbyists than it expected when it launched the product.

Kalshi’s push into single-stock perpetual futures adds another layer. It’s a strategic move by a company that’s been central to Robinhood’s prediction market growth, and it won’t be simple to untangle what it means for both sides. No details yet on a timeline for regulatory approval.

August crypto volume: $17.5 billion. Daily average across Robinhood and Bitstamp: $565 million.