The shift in one quarter
The clearest sign that retail finance is changing shape is in Robinhood's third-quarter results. Revenue from event contracts, which are simple yes-or-no bets on the outcome of a real-world event, rose more than sixfold to $173 million. Crypto revenue fell 55% from a year earlier to $120 million.1 Total revenue rose 12% to a record $1.42 billion. Net income fell 14% to $476 million, and diluted earnings per share fell 16% to $0.51.1 The company set a revenue record in the same quarter that profit declined, and event contracts were the fastest-growing line in the details we hold.
This is a single quarter, and our record does not say what drove the event-contract jump or whether it will last. It does show where retail customers are putting their money, and it is the reason the rest of this piece matters.
The longer record behind the headline
Robinhood's checked annual figures show a business that has changed quickly. Revenue was $1.865 billion in fiscal 2023, $2.951 billion in fiscal 2024 and $4.473 billion in fiscal 2025, which is roughly 2.4 times the 2023 level in two years.2 Profit moved even more: a net loss of $541 million in 2023, then net income of $1.411 billion in 2024 and $1.883 billion in 2025.3 Earnings per share went from a loss of $0.61 to a profit of $1.56 and then $2.05.3
The company's cash pile has been steadier. It stood at $4.835 billion at the end of fiscal 2023, $4.332 billion at the end of 2024 and $4.261 billion at the end of 2025.4 It reached $5.362 billion in the second quarter of 2026, against $4.162 billion in the same quarter of 2025.4 For scale, that is about $1.2 billion more cash than a year earlier.
One discrepancy in our own data is worth showing. For the quarter ending 30 September 2025, one record gives Robinhood's cash as $4.331 billion and another as $4.3 billion, a gap of about $31 million. The first is the precise figure and the second looks like a rounding. We use the precise one, but the two entries differ.4
Making event contracts mainstream
On 30 September 2026 Cboe Global Markets announced, at Robinhood's third annual HOOD Summit in Houston, that it plans to launch binary contracts tied to company-specific key performance indicators (KPIs). The launch was expected in October 2026, subject to regulatory approval, with products tied to 23 companies. Robinhood will be the first retail broker to offer them.5 Cboe's Steve Quirk said: "Earnings contracts give retail investors another tool to inform their strategies and offer an even more precise way to trade on anticipated company KPIs."5
That is a company executive describing his own product, and it should be read that way. Our records do not show whether the KPI contracts have launched or been approved.
Markets that do not close
The second change is about when you can trade. Nasdaq says the industry's move to a 23-hour trading day is expected on Sunday, 6 December 2026, pending readiness of the industry's consolidated price feeds and SEC rule changes. Subject to SEC approval, Nasdaq will add a 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Eastern session.6 Separately, the CFTC announced an industry roundtable on 15 December on whether derivatives markets could move to 24/7 trading.7 Both dates are plans and not completed events, and both depend on regulators.
The Brazilian presidential runoff on 25 October shows why round-the-clock access matters. Prediction markets had expected Bolsonaro to win, and he lost. Brazilian firms bought stablecoins, which are digital tokens designed to track the dollar, to hedge currency risk. Trading volume in the USDT stablecoin on Mercado Bitcoin rose nearly 800%, and Bitcoin volume rose 865%.8 Our record shows two things at once: prediction markets can be wrong, and money moves fast when news breaks, including outside normal hours.
Regulators: adapting and fighting
The rules are not settled. On 27 October the CFTC sued Utah to stop state efforts to shut down CFTC-registered contract markets using state laws, and said it has begun legal proceedings against nine other states.9 The fight is over who regulates event contracts, the federal government or the states, and the products keep growing while it is unresolved.
In stablecoins, Coinbase set a three-day deadline tied to the EU's MiCA crypto rules. It will automatically convert non-compliant stablecoins, including USDT, to USDC, and told users not to deposit them after 30 October.10 Treasury Secretary Bessent said on 27 October that stablecoins and digital assets could reinforce dollar dominance, that Treasury could coordinate with the SEC and CFTC on crypto rules, and that safeguards against crypto debanking are needed.11 The regulatory picture still looks like several agencies and several jurisdictions moving at different speeds.
The AI-agent question: who is acting for whom?
A third thread is software that acts for people. Baselayer, a San Francisco startup that helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, raised $35 million in a Series A led by M13, with Picus Capital participating. It plans to extend its identity technology to AI agents.12 Its executive Jonathan Awad put the problem this way: "Agents spin up and they spin down. How can you trust this random one-task agent?"12 He also warned that unless agents can show they act for legitimate people or businesses, "agents will just get blocked everywhere."12 He said relationships with financial institutions typically take 12 to 18 months to establish, and large merchant partnerships up to 24 months.12 That suggests the infrastructure will be slow to build.
Investors are cautious about AI doing the numbers. Norwest's Sean Jacobsohn said: "You don't want AI doing calculations because it is not good at math. There are certain workflows it can handle where it doesn't produce precise numbers. But when you need precision, accuracy and calculations, you can't rely on AI for that."13 Our own approach follows the same rule: the figures in this piece come from SEC filings and named documents, not from a model's arithmetic.
How far to trust the sources
The Robinhood financials are the strongest material here because they come from SEC filings. The press release is a company announcement, and the source we hold it from has a measured reliability of 53% across 6,322 checked claims, meaning roughly half of its claims held up when checked.5 The Baselayer and Norwest pieces come from Crunchbase News, which measured 49% across 41 checked claims, a much smaller sample.1213 We rely on those articles mainly for what named people said, not for numbers. The Baselayer raise and the executives' quotes are as reported there, and we have not confirmed them elsewhere. The dossier does not say how much of Robinhood sits inside common index funds, so we cannot tell you whether you already own it.
What to watch
- 6 December: whether Nasdaq's 23-hour day begins as expected, which depends on SEC approval and industry readiness.6
- 15 December: the CFTC roundtable on 24/7 derivatives trading.7
- The CFTC's cases against Utah and nine other states: they will help decide who governs event contracts.9
- Robinhood's next report: whether the $173 million of event-contract revenue holds, and whether profit recovers.1
- Cboe's KPI contracts: whether they get approval and launch.5
