The winning AI achieved 12.11% returns in just 14 days. The champion bested Grok, DeepSeek and Gemini in the biggest AI trading battle. An artificial intelligence (AI) model called Mystery Model was crowned the champion of the bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency trading competition, Alpha Arena, as announced on December 5, 2025. Mystery Model, an early version of Grok 4.20, achieved an average return of 12.11% in two weeks and won the final. With this, it surpassed models such as GPT-5.1, Gemini 3 and DeepSeek in all scenarios, these being considered the most advanced generative AI models. The models operated with real capital on Hyperliquid, without any human intervention. In the final round, 32 instances of different models competed using the same prompt and only market data. Among them, ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek, Claude, o1 and Gemini stood out. All trades were executed on Hyperliquid. Mystery Model closed with $4,844 in net profit in 14 days, according to official data.
The final result of the competition was captured in the graph below. Source: Alpha Arena. Jay Azhang, founder of Alpha Arena, described the final day of the competition as a climax of automated intensity. “There are 32 LLM cases that manage a total of $320,000 in real capital,” he detailed in X. These artificial intelligences ingest news, indices and market microstructure data every six minutes, processing constant flows of information in real time. “The Mystery Model is the only profitable model so far,” Azhang highlighted, underlining how this AI maintained stable profits while the others struggled not to sink into the red during the final 24 hours. As reported by BitcoinDynamic, the experiment began in October when the Alpha Arena platform organized the test. Each of the models was assigned $10,000 in initial funds. Azhang had previously announced the winners of previous stages of the competition. In the first stage, completed in November, the GPT 5.1 model led in aggregate performance in all tests. While the winner was Qwen 3 Max, which obtained a return of 22.3%. Alpha Arena is part of a growing trend towards the use of AI for financial analysis. Recent reports reveal that even Generation Z is adopting these tools to make investment decisions. This experiment stands out for operating with real capital in bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets, offering concrete data beyond simulations.
