DraftKings has launched its own prediction markets exchange, DKeX, becoming the latest major platform to bring matching, clearing, and regulatory licensing in-house rather than paying a third party for access. The move is part of a broader infrastructure race that Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani believes will define who captures the economics of a market heading toward $240 billion in annual volume by the end of 2026.
DraftKings and the Prediction Markets Exchange Land Grab
DKeX is built on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) licence and technology DraftKings acquired through its purchase of Railbird, a regulated exchange operator. The new venue sits directly inside the DraftKings Sports & Casino app, and the Predictions product it supports has already grown to an estimated $3.4 billion in annualised consumer volume.
The backdrop to that acquisition matters. Sportico reported that DraftKings lost roughly $5 billion in market capitalisation in the weeks before the Railbird deal was announced, a slide driven in part by the rising threat of prediction exchanges to its core sports-betting business. The infrastructure play was, at least partly, a defensive one.
State gambling regulators have added a further layer of pressure. Sports Business Journal reported that regulators in several US states warned sportsbooks that dealing in sports prediction markets could put their existing licences at risk, given that the contracts function as a backdoor route for residents in states that have not legalised sports wagering.
Robinhood, Coinbase and the Logic of Owning Your Own Venue
DraftKings is not alone. Robinhood and Susquehanna jointly acquired MIAXdx, a venue holding three CFTC regulatory designations: Designated Contract Market, Derivatives Clearing Organisation, and Swap Execution Facility, according to the Robinhood newsroom. Robinhood Markets serves as the controlling partner in that joint venture.
Miami International Holdings retained a 10% equity stake after selling the remaining 90% to the partnership, the MIAX newsroom confirmed. The venue was subsequently rebranded as Rothera Exchange. The CFTC’s own registry records the name change as taking effect on 20 January 2026.
Robinhood has since routed high-volume contracts, including World Cup markets, through Rothera rather than Kalshi, which previously handled that flow. The platform traded more than 16 billion event contracts year-to-date in 2026, against 12 billion for the whole of 2025.
Coinbase followed a comparable path. It initially launched its prediction markets offering in partnership with Kalshi, according to PYMNTS, before acquiring The Clearing Company to bring settlement in-house. The Clearing Company uses digital ledger technology to settle trades in stablecoins, enabling near-instant settlement, as Silicon Republic reported. Its founder, Toni Gemayel, previously served as head of growth at Kalshi, with the wider team drawing veterans from both Kalshi and Polymarket, according to CoinDesk. Coinbase reached roughly $100 million in annualised prediction-market revenue within two months of launch.
The common thread: all three previously paid a third party for exchange access and are now capturing that margin themselves. Distribution without owned matching and clearing infrastructure increasingly looks like a rented position rather than a defensible one.
Where the Market Goes from Here
Bernstein’s Chhugani projects that total prediction-market volumes will reach $240 billion in 2026, a 370% jump from last year, and compound at roughly 80% annually through 2030 to hit $1 trillion a year by the start of the next decade. He attributes the trajectory to expected federal regulatory clarity and to blockchain tokenisation improving liquidity pools.
The composition of volume is expected to shift too. Sports contracts currently account for more than 60% of trading, but Chhugani expects that share to roughly halve by 2030 as institutional money flows into economic, business, and political contracts instead. FanDuel, meanwhile, has already pointed in that direction: Sports Business Journal reported it struck a deal with CME Group, the Chicago-based derivatives exchange, to develop prediction markets tied to economic indicators.
Bernstein frames the landscape as a split between scale players with distribution (Robinhood, Coinbase, DraftKings) and pure-play venues with regulated infrastructure (Kalshi, Polymarket). That gap creates obvious M&A logic: a pure-play exchange is both a potential acquirer and an obvious acquisition target for any large platform that would rather buy regulated infrastructure than build it. With Chhugani’s $1 trillion figure as the eventual prize, the next contested question is who controls the plumbing when the volume arrives.
