Robinhood brought in more revenue from prediction markets last quarter than from crypto: $173 million from event contracts against $120 million from crypto trading. For the app that helped turn crypto into a mainstream retail trade, that's a strange result, and Robinhood wasn't the only company reporting a different kind of crypto business this earnings season.
Coinbase now earns nearly half its net revenue from subscriptions and services, Visa's stablecoin settlement has passed a $25 billion run rate, and Strategy booked a $20.9 billion unrealized gain by holding bitcoin. Bitcoin's price chart shows where the coin went. Earnings season shows who got paid along the way, and Q4's first big test is already on the calendar for November 3.
The Main Character: The Trade Is No Longer the Whole Business
Crypto used to have its own scoreboard: price, volume and ETF flows. Now it also runs through the earnings of brokers, exchanges, payment networks and corporate treasuries, and those reports show a crypto economy getting bigger than the trade itself. Read together, they answer two questions the price chart can't: where the money is actually being made, and which businesses still need bitcoin to go up to turn a profit.
The chart alone would have told a different story about Q3. BTC climbed from its June 30 low to close September near $83,600. Over the same period, retail spot volume on Coinbase was down 59% from a year earlier, and 37% fewer Robinhood users placed a crypto trade. The price recovered; retail participation didn't.
At Robinhood, Crypto Lost to Event Contracts
Robinhood reported record quarterly revenue of $1.42 billion, up 12% from a year earlier, but crypto wasn't the driver. Crypto transaction revenue fell 55% to $120 million, while event contracts brought in $173 million, more than six times last year's figure. Options still led at $399 million.
Crypto didn't disappear. Revenue rose 20% from Q2, though Robinhood Chain accounted for $26 million of the total. Excluding the chain, crypto trading revenue fell 6%. The bigger shift is where speculative activity is going: retail appetite hasn't faded, it now has more places to go, with sports driving most of the event-contract growth.
What to watch: Q4 includes the US midterms, and Robinhood already offers contracts on control of Congress. Q3 was largely a sports story, and November 3 will test whether politics becomes a second engine.
At Coinbase, Trading Is Now Only Half the Business
Coinbase's transaction revenue fell 44% from a year earlier to $590 million as crypto trading weakened, though it held roughly flat from Q2. Newer products helped: prediction markets passed $200 million in annualized revenue, and together with derivatives made up about a quarter of transaction revenue.
The larger shift is in the mix. Subscriptions and services now account for 49% of net revenue, up from 41% a year earlier, and average USDC held in Coinbase products reached a record $22 billion, up from $15 billion a year earlier.
The profit figure needs a caveat. Of Coinbase's $719 million in net income, about $715 million came from unrealized gains on crypto it holds for investment. The business depends less on trading fees, but its reported bottom line still moves with crypto prices.
What to watch: whether subscriptions, stablecoins and newer products keep growing their share of revenue, and whether that shows up in operating profit without help from mark-to-market gains.
At Visa, Crypto Is Moving Money Instead of Chasing It
Visa's stablecoin settlement passed a $25 billion annualized run rate in its fiscal fourth quarter, up tenfold from a year earlier. Visa now supports stablecoin settlement on 10 blockchains, stablecoin prefunding through Visa Direct has moved into commercial production, and more than 225 card programs are linked to stablecoins, up from about 130 a year earlier.
That $25 billion is settlement volume, not revenue, and it is still small next to Visa's wider business; Visa didn't say how much revenue it earns from it. But it points to a different model. Robinhood and Coinbase earn when customers trade. Visa's opportunity is payment infrastructure: moving money, some of which now travels on blockchain rails in an asset designed to hold a stable value, rather than profiting from token price movements.
What to watch: whether settlement growth turns into revenue Visa chooses to disclose.
Strategy Still Needs the Coin to Go Up
Strategy remains the clearest bet on bitcoin itself. It booked a $20.9 billion gain on digital assets in Q3 and $19.1 billion in net income attributable to common shareholders, and held 848,517 BTC as of October 25, up 26% this year, supported by $21.2 billion in capital raised year to date.
Those are mostly accounting gains, set by bitcoin's price at quarter end rather than cash from selling products. Strategy also has cash obligations: between late May and early August, it sold about $432 million of bitcoin to fund preferred dividends and buy back its STRC preferred stock. Its results release opened with a confident call, "We're at the beginning of the next bitcoin bull market," and Q4 results will depend largely on where BTC closes December.
What to watch: BTC's quarter-end price, and the pace and cost of new financing.
November 3 Is an Earnings Event Too
Q4 includes one of the year's biggest political trading events: all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are on the ballot on November 3. As of October 29, Polymarket priced Democratic control at about 92% for the House and 68% for the Senate. These are market-implied probabilities, not forecasts, and they move quickly.
For Robinhood and Coinbase, the more relevant number is the trading activity those contracts generate. Election contracts aren't crypto trades; they compete for the same speculative attention that used to flow into stocks, options and tokens. That activity lands in Q4 results, which will show whether event contracts were a seasonal windfall or something more durable. Follow the odds on MEXC Prediction Markets.
So Where Is the Money Being Made?
• Brokers earn from wherever traders' attention goes, and right now that includes event contracts.
• Exchanges are shifting toward subscriptions and stablecoin balances, though their reported profits still track crypto prices.
• Payment networks earn from moving money, whatever the price does.
• Bitcoin treasuries earn from the price itself, and from the capital they raise to buy more.
These businesses don't need the same market to succeed, which is why earnings dates now belong on a crypto trader's calendar alongside FOMC meetings, ETF flows and token unlocks. Next up outside crypto is Nvidia's November 17 report. A rising BTC price can still lift the whole sector, but it no longer tells the whole story. Several of this season's reporters trade 24/7 as stock futures on MEXC.
Quick Hits
The hedges aren't hedging. The Fed held rates at 3.75% to 4% on October 28, with two officials voting for another hike. Gold and silver have fallen sharply from their January peaks despite persistent inflation and geopolitical risk. Saxo Bank's Ole Hansen has pointed to rising real yields and a firm dollar as the main headwinds for a metal that pays no interest. The Fed's December decision is the next test.
Cash beat capex. Microsoft and Alphabet both reported strong cloud growth, but investors focused on the cash left after spending. Microsoft generated about $18.6 billion in free cash flow, while Alphabet's turned negative and its shares fell about 10%. SK hynix sat at the other extreme, with an 80% operating margin and plans to return about 100 trillion won to shareholders this year.
Another red October? Bitcoin is heading for a second straight losing October despite its reputation for seasonal strength. Galaxy Research argues the bear market ended in June, citing five straight weekly closes above the 50-week moving average through October 18. October's final close will give both sides a new number to argue over.
Translation
"Our run rate has surpassed $25 billion in annualized volume."
Ryan McInerney, Visa CEO, fiscal Q4 earnings call, October 27.
A network that processes trillions of dollars in payments now highlights stablecoin settlement volume in its earnings commentary. It isn't a reported revenue line, but it made the earnings call, which is a kind of adoption a bitcoin chart doesn't show.
New & Noteworthy
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