Bernstein raises Robinhood price target to $160 as prediction markets revenue could overtake crypto

Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani just bumped Robinhood’s price target from $130 to $160, and the reasoning tells you everything about where retail finance is heading. It’s not crypto trading driving the upgrade. It’s prediction markets.

The firm forecasts that Robinhood’s prediction markets revenue will jump from $150 million in 2025 to $586 million in 2026. That’s a 286% year-over-year increase, the kind of growth rate that makes even crypto traders raise an eyebrow.

The Rothera play and why it matters

At the center of this thesis is Rothera, a CFTC-licensed prediction markets exchange that Robinhood launched as a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group. The platform went live on January 20, 2026, after Robinhood acquired a 90% stake in MIAXdx, giving it the regulatory infrastructure to offer event contracts to US customers.

Here’s the thing about prediction markets: they sit at the intersection of trading, gambling, and information discovery. Polymarket proved the concept during the 2024 US election cycle, but it couldn’t serve American users directly. Robinhood, with its massive retail user base and a proper CFTC license, is essentially walking through the door that Polymarket propped open.

The Rothera platform lets Robinhood channel event contracts with lower fees than competitors, which is the same playbook that made Robinhood a household name in stock trading. Undercut everyone on price, attract volume, monetize the flow.

And the volume projections are substantial. Bernstein cites $12 billion in prediction markets trading volume for 2025, rising to $16 billion in 2026, with major global events like the World Cup expected to be a significant catalyst. Sports betting meets financial markets meets a generation that grew up treating everything as a tradeable outcome.

Looking further out, Bernstein projects prediction markets revenue could reach $1.7 billion by 2028, representing a 64% compound annual growth rate from 2025. If those numbers hold, prediction markets revenue would eclipse what Robinhood currently generates from crypto trading. In English: the side hustle might become the main business.

Robinhood Chain enters the picture

The other piece of Bernstein’s bull case is the Robinhood Chain, which launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026. Built as an Arbitrum-based Layer 2 blockchain, it’s designed to support tokenized assets and plug directly into decentralized finance protocols.

Day-one partnerships include Uniswap and Pleiades, which signals that Robinhood isn’t trying to build a walled garden. Instead, it’s positioning its chain as a bridge between traditional retail brokerage and the DeFi ecosystem. Think of it as Robinhood saying: we’ll be the on-ramp, and the open internet of finance can be the destination.

This is a meaningful strategic shift. For years, Robinhood’s crypto business was essentially a custodial trading interface, not much different from buying stocks. Users couldn’t withdraw tokens or interact with DeFi protocols in any meaningful way. The Robinhood Chain changes that equation by giving the platform native blockchain infrastructure that can support everything from tokenized equities to yield-generating strategies.

Whether users actually care about this level of integration remains an open question. But from a revenue diversification standpoint, it gives Bernstein another reason to be bullish.

The super-app thesis

Bernstein’s analyst note, released on July 20, 2026, frames Robinhood as evolving into a comprehensive financial super-app. That’s a term that gets thrown around a lot in fintech, usually by companies that are great at one thing and mediocre at everything else.

Robinhood’s case is different because each new vertical, prediction markets, crypto, blockchain infrastructure, feeds back into the same core asset: a massive, engaged retail user base that already has accounts funded and ready to trade. The marginal cost of adding a new product line to 20-plus million funded accounts is dramatically lower than building from scratch.

The Susquehanna partnership adds credibility on the institutional side. Susquehanna is one of the largest proprietary trading firms in the world, and its involvement in Rothera suggests the prediction markets venture has serious market-making depth behind it, not just a flashy retail frontend.

For investors watching this space, the key risk is execution. Robinhood has a history of stumbling during high-volume moments (the 2021 GameStop saga still haunts the brand), and prediction markets carry regulatory complexity that goes beyond standard brokerage. The CFTC has been generally supportive of event contracts, but political prediction markets in particular remain a policy hot button.

There’s also the competition factor. Kalshi, the other CFTC-regulated prediction market, has been building its own user base and recently won a court battle to list political event contracts. If prediction markets become a mainstream asset class, Robinhood will have to defend its fee advantage against well-funded competitors who got there first.

The $160 target implies meaningful upside, and Bernstein’s revenue projections are aggressive by any standard. A 64% CAGR through 2028 assumes prediction markets go from niche curiosity to mainstream financial product in under three years. That’s possible, especially with a World Cup cycle and continued regulatory clarity. But it’s the kind of forecast that requires everything to go right, and in fintech, that rarely happens on schedule.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.