Robinhood bought a license. Kalshi had built a business

For a year Robinhood was Kalshi’s largest distributor. Then it bought a CFTC-licensed exchange off the shelf, put Susquehanna behind the order book, and began routing its own flow to itself. The World Cup was the proving ground, the migration is under way, and the lesson is the one every platform eventually teaches its suppliers: the license was never the moat. Summary Robinhood and Susquehanna International Group acquired MIAXdx, the CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse formerly known as LedgerX, and rebranded it Rothera, giving the brokerage its own regulated venue for event contracts. The migration began quietly: economic-data and baseball contracts in a late-May soft launch, then World Cup markets self-certified on May 27 and live for the tournament’s June 11 opening. The routing is deliberately split, with core high-volume markets such as match outcomes, tournament winner, and totals moving to Rothera while player props and parlay-style contracts still route to Kalshi, and the chief financial officer has said most flow is expected to migrate over time. The scale behind the shift is the story: Robinhood has processed more than 16 billion event contracts this year against 12...