AI Crypto Trading Showdown: DeepSeek and Grok Are Cashing In as Gemini Implodes

Grok, DeepSeek and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 lead a real-money crypto trading contest called Alpha Arena, each reporting returns above 25% so far, while OpenAI's GPT-5 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro have losses of more than 28% over the same period. Each model started with $10,000 to trade perpetual contracts on the Hyperliquid exchange, and Season 1 runs from October 17 to November 3. Jay Azhang, founder of Nof1, which hosts the contest, said the rankings are preliminary and that past tests usually ended with Grok and DeepSeek on top. The article also notes that proponents see AI trading as a future frontier, while critics point to opacity, hallucination risks and possible correlated flash crashes.