Before diving into today’s email, I filmed a quick video last week breaking down Notebook LM. They’re a killer new platform built off of Google’s Gemini product. Feel free to check it out below:

Click here to check it out now.

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Today’s Menu

• DeepSeek R1 Crushes OpenAI o1—at a Fraction of the Cost

• Bitcoin Slides After Trump’s Silence on Crypto

Markets

TODAY IN AI

DeepSeek R1 Crushes OpenAI o1—at a Fraction of the Cost

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek just launched R1, an open-source reasoning model that reportedly matches or outperforms OpenAI’s o1 on key benchmarks—while costing 5-10% of o1’s API price for developers.

DeepSeek-R1 uses a reasoning-based approach similar to o1, sacrificing speed for more reliable results in complex domains like physics, math, and science. With 671B parameters, it’s a heavyweight, but distilled versions as small as 1.5B can run on a laptop.

The model excels on AIME, MATH-500, and SWE-bench Verified, and is available for commercial use under an MIT license. Developers pay just $0.14 per million input tokens—a steal compared to o1’s $7.50.

Why it matters: Open-source AI just reached a major milestone, challenging ChatGPT-level capabilities. The twist? It’s DeepSeek, not OpenAI, staying true to open-source ideals. For developers and smaller labs, the AI race just became a whole lot more accessible.

^{Today In Crypto}

Bitcoin Slides After Trump’s Silence on Crypto

Bitcoin dropped to just above $101K after President Trump’s inaugural speech failed to mention crypto or the anticipated strategic bitcoin reserve. BTC had soared to a record $109K on Monday, driven by speculation around Trump’s crypto-friendly agenda. The omission triggered a 5%+ sell-off before recovering to trade above $103K by mid-morning in Europe. Major tokens like SOL, DOGE, and ADA tumbled around 10%, with the broader market (CoinDesk 20) falling 6.5%.

Meanwhile, the official Trump and Melania memecoins saw a brutal correction. Profit-taking led to 60% losses in the last 24 hours, wiping out nearly $70M in liquidation losses. Despite the plunge, these aren’t fringe tokens: TRUMP traded over $19B in volume, eclipsing ADA and TRX combined.

In options markets, BTC remains king. Deribit data shows persistent bullishness for Bitcoin over Ether, with BTC call options priced significantly higher than puts. This trend extends as the ETH/BTC ratio hit a three-year low of 0.03, reinforcing BTC’s dominance—even as Trump’s strategic reserve remains unconfirmed.

Is the sell-off a short-term reaction, or does it mark a turning point? Either way, the market’s next moves are set to be volatile.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon James