Comparative Analysis of LSTM and GRU Models with Hyperparameter Optimization for Bitcoin Price Prediction

Abstract

Although Bitcoin is acknowledged as the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and trading volume in the world's financial market, investors face a great deal of risk and uncertainty due to its exceptionally high volatility and non-linear price changes. To provide a data-driven foundation for risk reduction and forecasting support, accurate modeling techniques are crucial. This work attempts to provide a thorough comparative analysis mapping the precise accuracy–efficiency trade-off between Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) models under a standardized Grid Search hyperparameter optimization pipeline using a recent Bitcoin closing-price dataset spanning from January 1, 2020, to January 1, 2026. The research methodology follows a structured data science pipeline, beginning with data acquisition from Yahoo Finance, followed by preprocessing using Min-Max Scaling fitted strictly on the training partition to eliminate data leakage. Model development involves an experimental approach where both LSTM and GRU neural controllers are tuned to extract optimal structural weights. The predictive precision of these models is rigorously evaluated using three standard metrics: MAE, RMSE, and MAPE, while processing throughput is measured via hardware execution times. The research findings indicate that the optimized LSTM model achieved superior one-step-ahead predictive precision with a MAPE of 2.32%, whereas the GRU model recorded a higher error rate of 3.94%. However, the GRU model demonstrated a significant advantage in computational efficiency, completing the training process 8.45 times faster than LSTM. In conclusion, while LSTM is recommended as a forecasting support tool for high-precision financial analysis, GRU remains a viable, parameter-efficient alternative for real-time monitoring on resource-constrained systems before real-world financial deployment.