AI models given $10K to compete in first-of-its-kind crypto-trading competition — and most crashed and burned
During a cryptocurrency investing competition, four popular AI programs failed miserably, with most of them losing over 50 percent of the money they were supposed to maximize. Only two Chinese programs managed to make a modest profit.
The Alpha Arena contest, organized by Nof1, gave six AI models $10,000 each and identical input data. The goal was for the bots to make as much money as possible trading crypto stocks on the open market from Oct. 17 to Nov. 3.
According to Jay Azhang, the creator of the project, the aim is to provide the average person with the best tools to make money through trading. The competition is designed to showcase the effectiveness of different AI models in trading scenarios.
Six AI programs, including Grok from xAI, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet, Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Chinese-owned bots Deepseek and Qwen, were given the endowments and were left to make trading decisions on their own.
The results of the competition were surprising, with popular bots like ChatGPT and Gemini losing significant amounts of money, while Chinese models Deepseek and Qwen managed to grow their portfolios.
Despite the challenges faced by the AI models, the competition organizers are planning to continue with future iterations that will involve more AI models and expand into trading equities in addition to cryptocurrencies.
