Robinhood crypto trading volume jumps 61% in August

Robinhood has reported a 61% monthly rise in notional crypto trading volume to $17.5 billion in August, led by activity on its Bitstamp exchange.

Robinhood’s August operating data, released Thursday, showed that crypto activity recovered from a quiet July but remained below the level recorded a year earlier.

Robinhood crypto volume rebounds from July slowdown

At $17.5 billion, August crypto trading volume increased by $6.6 billion from the previous month’s $10.9 billion. Robinhood defines notional volume as the total dollar value of crypto assets bought and sold across its platforms.

Compared with August 2025, however, trading activity fell 38% from $28.1 billion. The figures show that the monthly recovery has not returned crypto turnover to last year’s level.

Bitstamp accounted for most of the August total, processing $10.1 billion. Activity on the exchange rose 53% from July after Robinhood completed its acquisition of the trading venue in 2025.

Robinhood’s main app generated another $7.4 billion in crypto volume, a 72% increase from July but a 46% decline from the same month last year. Combined activity across the app and Bitstamp averaged approximately $565 million per day during August.

The split also shows how Bitstamp has expanded Robinhood’s crypto operations beyond its retail brokerage app. Starting in June 2025, the company began including crypto held on Bitstamp in its reported platform assets, according to its financial disclosures.

Despite the August recovery, crypto remains one part of a platform that also covers stocks, options, futures, margin lending, cash products, and event contracts. Robinhood reported $384 billion in total platform assets at the end of August, up 26% from a year earlier.

Funded customers reached 28.6 million, while margin balances climbed to $21.5 billion. The amount customers borrowed for trading increased by 72% year over year, providing another source of revenue through interest payments.

Prediction markets remain Robinhood’s faster-growing product

While crypto recorded the larger monthly gain, Robinhood’s event-contract business continued to show much stronger annual growth.

Customers traded 4.7 billion event contracts during August, down 23% from July but about 15 times the 300 million contracts processed in August 2025. Products available through the platform cover outcomes such as Federal Reserve decisions, elections, and sporting events.

An event contract generally settles at either $1 or zero, depending on whether the selected outcome occurs. A customer who buys a “yes” contract pays the market price and receives $1 at settlement if the event happens; an incorrect position expires without a payout.

Robinhood offers the products through exchanges including Kalshi and ForecastEx, as well as Rothera, a joint venture launched in June. According to the company’s earlier disclosures, Rothera had processed more than 3.5 billion contracts by the time Robinhood released its second-quarter results.

In July, crypto.news previously reported that Robinhood posted record quarterly revenue of $1.31 billion. Event-contract revenue climbed more than tenfold from a year earlier to $156 million, surpassing the $100 million generated by crypto transactions during the quarter.

Crypto transaction revenue fell 38% year over year in the same period, even though Robinhood had added Bitstamp’s operations to its reporting. The difference placed prediction markets ahead of crypto as a source of transaction-based income for the quarter.

US lawmakers examine event-contract trading

Rapid growth in prediction markets has brought the products under closer review in Washington and several states, where officials continue to debate whether some contracts should be treated as federally regulated derivatives or gambling products.

Members of Congress have introduced more than 10 prediction-market bills since January, according to the supplied report. One proposal, the PREDICT Act, would prevent members of Congress, the president, and other senior federal officials from trading contracts linked to political events.

The proposed restriction addresses concerns that public officials could trade while holding information unavailable to other market participants. Debate has also focused on whether contracts involving sports and politics belong inside an app used for stocks, retirement investments, and other financial products.

For U.S. users, Robinhood presents event contracts as products traded through regulated exchanges rather than conventional sportsbook wagers. State authorities and market operators have still disputed which regulators hold authority over certain sports contracts, leaving the legal treatment unsettled across several jurisdictions.

The regulatory issue carries direct relevance for HOOD investors because event contracts generated more transaction revenue than crypto in the second quarter. Any limits on available contracts, eligible customers or distribution could affect a business line that has expanded rapidly over the past year, although Robinhood has not provided an estimate of the possible financial impact.

Robinhood Chain activity rises despite network risks

Robinhood has also pushed further into blockchain-based trading through Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network designed to process transactions away from Ethereum’s main execution layer before posting data back to it.

As of Sept. 1, decentralized exchanges on the network recorded approximately $1.6 billion in daily volume, representing a 61% rise over four days. The activity came after the chain launched its public mainnet on July 1 with tokenized stocks and access through Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries.

Network growth has not been free of operational problems. On Sept. 4, Robinhood Chain suffered a 14-minute network outage that stopped block production and left transfers and smart-contract calls waiting for confirmation.

Block production later resumed, but Robinhood had not released a detailed cause at the time of the report. Available records did not indicate that customer balances were lost, and the interruption did not affect stocks, ETFs or other assets held through Robinhood’s conventional brokerage accounts.

Robinhood Chain also carries a separate U.S. access issue because its stock tokens are not offered to American customers. Company documents describe the products as tokenized debt securities issued in Jersey, with each token tracking a stock or exchange-traded fund without granting the holder ownership or voting rights in the referenced company.

A recent dispute with AMC brought that structure under added attention after the theater chain objected to a token linked to its shares. Robinhood’s filings state that the stock tokens have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act and cannot be offered, sold or delivered in the United States or to U.S. persons.

Following Thursday’s operating update, Robinhood shares closed 0.83% lower. The decline came during a week in which analysts at Mizuho and StoneX raised their price targets for HOOD, while Robinhood’s next quarterly earnings report is expected on Nov. 4.