AI Token Black Market

Here's what is happening: Chinese resellers are offering Claude tokens at 70-90% below official Anthropic API prices. They achieve this by reselling capacity from pooled Claude Max 5x accounts, payments fraud, and also reselling the model output & reasoning chains to various Chinese labs. Chinese and ChatGPT are both blocked in China. You need to use a VPN to access either, and you can't pay with a Chinese bank card. So most people who want access to Claude buy access via a reseller. It's the easiest and cheapest way to access Anthropic models in China. These resellers operate tens of thousands of bot accounts, which is also why Anthropic introduced identity verification, to slow down the onslaught of bot accounts. Here's one token reseller, they're offering Opus 4.8 at a 93% discount below official API rates: https://yunwu.ai/pricing?provider=Anthropic This is one reason why Deepseek & GLM are priced so cheaply, they are competing with impossibly low token prices in China. They have to keep prices low, in order for people to use them. I shared this story a few months back, but it never got any traction https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens...

A screenshot of a Hacker News post describing Chinese resellers offering heavily discounted Claude API tokens through pooled accounts, payment fraud, and bot accounts. The joke is the absurdity of an AI black market where access to premium models is resold at enormous discounts because of regional blocks, payment limitations, and intense competition. EN: A screenshot of a Hacker News post describing Chinese resellers offering heavily discounted Claude API tokens through pooled accounts, payment fraud, and bot accounts. The joke is the absurdity of an AI black market where access to premium models is resold at enormous discounts because of regional blocks, payment limitations, and intense competition.

• @gentoomemes / 21187 2026-06-25