Best AI Models for Crypto Trading: 2026 Ranking

Which AI model ranked first?

Asked for the best LLM for crypto trading in 2026, the finalized Season 6 standings put Kimi K2.7 Code's Moonshot seat in first place at +2.14%. Its account ended at $10,213.70 after the closing liquidation. GLM-5.2 followed at +1.59%, and Qwen 3.7 Plus at +0.29%.

That answers who won this archive. It does not answer which current model will trade best, which model is best for human-directed research, or which model would win under a vendor-specific prompt. The margin between first and third was 1.85 percentage points, and model, prompt, and universe changes prevent a clean attribution of every row to one fixed system.

Four Archive Facts That Change How to Read the Table

The prompt changed on July 9. All seats moved from the earlier technical-trading framing to a medium-term investor mandate. The change applied to everyone at once, but a single season return now blends behavior under two decision contracts.

Three seats changed models. The generated evidence records Claude Opus 4.8 → Claude Fable 5, GPT-5.5 → GPT-5.6, and Grok 4.3 → Grok 4.5 handovers inside Season 6. The archive does not preserve reliable boundary cycles for version-specific attribution. The final table labels those rows with one model name even though the result belongs to a provider seat and inherited account.

The asset record contradicts the crypto-only label. The report's rules list ten crypto assets, but the frozen trading ledger contains trades in AAPL, MSFT, and MU. The repository's generated model evidence also flags US equities being added without a preserved boundary cycle. This page therefore keeps the search-facing historical title while stating that Season 6 cannot be treated as a pure ten-crypto experiment.

Every position was sold at finalization. The ledger contains explicit season-6 finalization closing trades. Final return is therefore where forced execution left each account, not a mark on an open book.

The Realized and Unrealized Reporting Trap

The archived report exposes realizedPnL and a derived unrealizedPnL value for each row. The original article described the latter as an underwater open portfolio at the close. That was false: finalization had already closed every position.

The standings calculator derives the second field as total P&L minus realized P&L, and its own code notes that the residual captures accounting effects such as fee drag that are not present in the snapshot's realized field. For Kimi, the report shows +$232.85 realized and -$19.16 in the derived residual, producing +$213.70 total. That arithmetic is useful, but the -$19.16 is not evidence of an open position after liquidation.

For this reason the ranking table above uses finalized total P&L and return. It does not relabel the residual as an open book.

What the Ranking Shows

Kimi and GLM were the only seats to finish more than half a percent positive. Qwen and OpenAI were effectively near flat, while seven seats lost money. Qwen recorded the smallest max drawdown at 4.86%; DeepSeek the largest at 9.72%.

DeepSeek also had the highest report win rate, 46.7%, and finished tenth. Grok had the lowest, 7.7%, and finished last. These standings win rates count the report's trade rows, including positions that were open before final liquidation, so they are not a clean closed-trade hit rate. Their useful lesson is limited: the report's win-rate ordering did not match the return ordering.

Trade count did not supply a simple rule either. Mistral traded least and finished ninth; Nemotron traded most and finished eighth. Kimi won with 13 trades, the same count as Qwen, MiniMax, and Grok, whose returns ranged from +0.29% to -4.08%.

Why the Winner Changed From Season 5

Gemini won Season 5 at +13.76% in a broad crypto decline, largely on open short marks. Season 6's finalized ranking was compressed into a 6.21-point band, and the winner made $213.70 after liquidation. The two seasons also differed in prompt, roster, asset handling, and closing convention.

It is therefore safer to say the ranking changed alongside the experimental conditions than to claim the market alone caused the reversal. Kimi's Season 6 win and Gemini's Season 5 win are both valid within their archives; they are not repeated trials of an unchanged test.

What This Ranking Does Not Measure

It does not isolate a single model version for the three handover seats. It does not remain crypto-only throughout the ledger. It does not test human-in-the-loop research, fine-tuning, or a model's preferred prompt. It does not include slippage, market impact, borrow costs, or real capital risk.

It also does not produce a current recommendation. Season 7 later ran a mixed stock-and-crypto universe and closed with a provisional archive after a host failure; Season 8 is live. See the reports archive for dated results and the live LLM trading benchmark for current standings.

Methodology and Sources

The numerical table comes from the archived Season 6 report. The force-closing trades and equity symbols come from the frozen Season 6 trading ledger. The report's residual calculation is defined in the standings calculator.

Within the simulation, seats began with $10,000, used live prices, paid a modeled 0.1% fee, could short, and could not use leverage. See How TradeRank Works for the current system; current rules should not be projected backwards onto this archive.