Robinhood Expands Prediction Markets Reach

Visa Stablecoin Settlement Surges 15x | Aave Launches Official MCP Server

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
September 09, 2026

📢Sponsor | 💡Telegram | 📰Past Editions

Good Morning.

Robinhood's tie-ups with Crypto.com and OG.com are less about NFL season hype and more about hedging its bets on where prediction market liquidity ends up. By taking equity in both venues while still routing to Kalshi, ForecastEX and Rothera, Robinhood is positioning itself as neutral infrastructure across a fragmented and increasingly contested category, one that already outearns its crypto trading business.

Check out our latest podcast episode!

In Today's Email:

What Matters: Robinhood Expands Prediction Markets Reach 👀
Case Study: Visa Stablecoin Settlement Surges 15x 🔎
Governance & Features: Aave Launches Official MCP Server 🖥️

You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at marco@launchy.app.

Narratives: Prediction markets consolidation

For daily market updates and airdrop alphas, check out our telegram!

TOGETHER WITH

Arbital: Institutional Market Making, For Everyone

Automate your perp DEX market making.

Arbital helps you run passive market making strategies across Hyperliquid, Pacifica, Extended, Decibel, Hotstuff, GRVT, and HIP-3 markets - generating volume, and farming points.

Start running your automated strategies today

WHAT MATTERS

Robinhood Expands Prediction Markets Reach

State of play: Robinhood is partnering with Crypto.com and OG.com to expand its prediction markets offering ahead of the NFL season, and will take equity stakes in both companies as part of the deal.

Robinhood will take equity stakes in Crypto.com and OG.com, priced off Crypto.com's recent $20B valuation from a Citadel Securities investment.
Event contracts will still also route to Kalshi, ForecastEX and Rothera, giving customers access to a wider range of contracts this season.
Robinhood traded 13.6B event contracts in Q2, including 5B during the World Cup, generating about $156M in revenue.
The company will launch a dedicated election hub with interactive heat maps and live vote tracking once polls close.
Prediction markets outearned Robinhood's crypto business for the first time in Q2, a new milestone for the segment.

Why it matters: Prediction markets are becoming a core revenue line for brokerages, not a side bet. Robinhood routing volume across multiple venues signals the category is maturing into real market-making infrastructure rather than a single-platform novelty.

Our take: The equity stake in Crypto.com is the more interesting signal than the NFL tie-in. Robinhood is betting that owning a piece of the venues it routes to matters more long term than exclusivity, especially with Kalshi's rivalry pushing everyone to diversify.

For builders and investors: Multi-venue routing means liquidity and contract design will differentiate platforms more than distribution. Teams building in this space should watch how event contract standards evolve.

CASE STUDY

Visa Stablecoin Settlement Surges 15x

Visa's stablecoin settlement volume has surpassed a $20B annualized run rate, up more than 15x year over year, as stablecoin-linked card programs scale across its network.

More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were live globally in Visa's fiscal second quarter, with payment volume up nearly 200% year over year.
Rapid growth is straining issuers' working capital, since daily settlement obligations often outpace collections from cardholders.
Credit Coop built a stablecoin revolving credit facility with Visa, using daily settlement data to size funding and automate repayments onchain.
Rain has financed about $2B through the facility since August 2023, with over 2,000 borrow events and zero defaults.
Credit Coop has financed more than $2.5B in cumulative volume since 2023 across more than 3,000 onchain borrow events.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Bitmine Nears 5% of ETH Supply

State of play: Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought 28,086 ETH over the past week, bringing its holdings to 5.93 million ETH, or about 4.9% of Ethereum's total supply.

Bitmine's ETH holdings are worth about $14.8B, with 5.07 million ETH (85% of its balance) staked via MAVAN and staking partners.
The company projects annualized staking revenue of $330M based on a 7-day annualized yield of 2.61%.
Beyond ETH, Bitmine holds 211 BTC, stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco Holdings, and $593M in cash and securities, totaling $15.7B in assets.
Chairman Tom Lee said ETH outperformed the S&P 500 by 5,430 basis points in Q3 through Sept. 4, alongside BTC and SOL.
ETH traded at $2,471.92 on Tuesday, down 1.39%, while Bitmine shares closed at $24.97 on Friday, down 5.6%.

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

Aave Launches Official MCP Server

Aave Labs has launched an official MCP server at mcp.aave.com, letting any AI assistant read live Aave data and build transactions across both V3 and V4 through a single connection.

Every transaction returns unsigned, with the user's own wallet signing via prepare tools, since the server holds no keys and cannot move funds.
The server reads chains, markets, reserves, rates, health factors, and position data, and builds transactions for supply, borrow, withdraw, repay, and more.
A single version argument of v3, v4, or all lets one connection query or compare both protocols directly.
Built on Aave Kit, responses are compressed from about 17 KB to about 1 KB per reserve to reduce data sent to models.
Developers can add the server as a custom connector in Claude or ChatGPT, or via Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients.

Other notable feature updates:

Bybit launches 24/7 currency pair per petuals.
Pendle adds second pool on Robinhood, sNUKE.
Velocity launches Beta Round 2 & DFX recovery plan.
TermMax launches options markets on RH Chain, BNB.
Etherscan launches Flow, visual transaction tracing tool.
Morpho Midnight goes live, fixed-term fixed-rate credit.
Compound launches institutional USDC lending, up to 87% LTV.

QUICK BITES

Hyperliquid open interest climbs to $14.3B.
Strategy repurchases $176M of STRC shares.
Visa stablecoin settlement tops $20B annualized run rate.
Pons propels Robinhood Chain fees to record $6M in daily fees.
First staked ETF tied to Tron hits the US markets on Wednesday.
Hunter Biden details LAPTOP's airdrop and burn-or-charity rules.
Robinhood expands prediction markets with Crypto.com, OG partnerships.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

Wintermute’s r ead on crypto market update.
Blocmates’s read on Top 15 Utility Plays on Robinhood Chain.
RWA Foundation’s read on RWA Perps Report With Defi Llama.

— (@)

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time, but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.