This research examines deep-learning and machine-learning models for cryptocurrency price prediction, with a keen focus on Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Solana (SOL). Cryptocurrencies exhibit high volatility, non-linear behavior and are able to react strongly to exogenous events, making their prediction and forecasting challenging. The primary aim of this research is to determine which predictive models yield optimal performance in characterizing these complexities and to provide empirical guidance on real-life investment and risk-management applications. Four approaches were used for this forecasting: Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), a combination of LSTM-GRU models, and Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) regression. The daily historical data were used to train and test each model on different forecast horizons, and performance was measured accordingly by Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) values. As shown in the results, it can be observed that GRU exhibited the lowest error rates in the majority of the assets, particularly in short-term predictions. LSTM demonstrated a promising ability to capture long dependencies, whereas the hybrid LSTM-GRU system showed a similar performance proficiency by combining the relative superiorities of the two respective models. On the other hand, the conventional SGD regression was the worst among all the deep-learning algorithms, thereby demonstrating the extreme capability of these algorithms in modelling non-linear time sequences. The results confirm GRU as the most viable model for AI-powered crypto prediction and demonstrate the potential of hybrid architecture, at least in certain situations. This study will contribute to the existing debates about the role of deep learning in predicting financial outcomes and provide valuable insights to traders, analysts, and researchers navigating the uncertainties of the digital asset world.
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