Claude Opus 4.8 has a single-task cost of $1.78, while DeepSeek V4 Pro is just $0.04—the former is 44 times the latter.

This figure is even more worth repeated contemplation by the crypto market than any AI “intelligence score” ranking.
While the market is still debating Bitcoin’s bottom and ETF flows, pricing power at the AI model layer is undergoing a structural shift. A 44x cost gap means that if the application layer adopts low-cost models at scale, the business models of the entire on-chain AI agent ecosystem and DePIN inference networks will be re-priced.
A more direct signal is that low-cost models are squeezing the profit margins of high-cost models. If crypto projects bet on a single model ecosystem, they may face the risk of a collapse in underlying costs.
The flip side risk is that low cost does not equal high intelligence. Evaluation shows Claude still leads with a score of 56, while DeepSeek scores 44. If application scenarios require high precision, low-cost models may not be sufficient. Crypto infrastructure needs to support multiple models at the same time, rather than betting on one direction.
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