China’s budget AI bots smash ChatGPT in crypto trading face-off
Chinese budget AI models QWEN3 MAX and DeepSeek outperformed ChatGPT in an autonomous crypto trading competition.Summary
In an autonomous cryptocurrency trading competition, the Chinese budget AI model QWEN3 MAX secured first place, being the only one to generate positive returns ($751 profit at 7.5%), while its more heavily funded competitors incurred significant losses. DeepSeek, another budget model, finished second. OpenAI’s ChatGPT performed the worst, losing 57% of its initial investment. QWEN3 achieved its profit by maintaining a 20x leveraged long position on Bitcoin, initiated when BTC was at $104,556. The results suggest that even well-funded models like ChatGPT, which benefited from $5.7 billion in R&D spending in H1 2025, still lack effective real-time capabilities for crypto trading compared to the budget models, whose training costs are estimated to be significantly lower.
(Source：Cointelegraph)