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The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

vectoral.com

11–20 of 149 posts

Re: The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

#12
post #2

> For example, one operator’s price-comparison site listed a package that bought the equivalent of $3,333 worth of official Anthropic credit for 425 RMB — roughly $0.13 of usage per $1 spent. Do these numbers make sense? $0.13 usage per $1 spent?

Also 425 RMB is about $59 so $1 of tokens for $0.017 not $0.13 (the discount rate quoted also seems off).

Re: The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

#16
The real problem is subscription models. Businesses want recurring revenue so they try to game the ratio of fixed subscription prices to COGS but it's always a game and so whoever can figure out the upside for the company can figure out the complementary upside for themselves.

How would one even word a bulletproof subscription contract for agentic tokens, anyway? You can't forbid automation because sub-agents are automation. You could forbid "using tokens for the benefit of more than the human who signed up" but then what do families (especially with kids) need to do? What if your friend asks you a question and you turn to a chat model? Forbidding "reselling" tokens outside of a household sounds like the closest terms but that's leaky for anyone who travels a lot, etc.

Fixed cost per token simply works.

Re: The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

#17

"Token reseller market" is a fancy way of saying credit card fraud. If someone stole xboxs from stores using stolen credit cards and then sold them at 10% of their price, at what point is it a "resller market" and not "criminal enterpirse"?

Fair enough. Is the right enforcement then to ignore the "token resellers" and go after the credit card business listed at the "upstream" on his post?

Re: The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

#18

The real problem is subscription models. Businesses want recurring revenue so they try to game the ratio of fixed subscription prices to COGS but it's always a game and so whoever can figure out the upside for the company can figure out the complementary upside for themselves. How would one even word a bulletproof subscription contract for agentic tokens, anyway? You can't forbid automation because sub-agents are aut…

> How would one even word a bulletproof subscription contract for agentic tokens, anyway? You can't forbid automation because sub-agents are automation. You could forbid "using tokens for the benefit of more than the human who signed up" but then what do families (especially with kids) need to do? What if your friend asks you a question and you turn to a chat model? Forbidding "reselling" tokens outside of a household sounds like the closest terms but that's leaky for anyone who travels a lot, etc.

reverse the pricing structure; give modest discount once you go over certain amount of tokens, then you are incentivized NOT to start multiple accounts.

require first few transactions to be pre-paid to get around at least some of the card problems.

Of course, that would fuck over subsidized plans, but I don't see any option to keep them if you want to avoid the flood

Re: The relay market powering token resellers and fraud

#19

"Token reseller market" is a fancy way of saying credit card fraud. If someone stole xboxs from stores using stolen credit cards and then sold them at 10% of their price, at what point is it a "resller market" and not "criminal enterpirse"?

With theft, somebody ends up without an Xbox. Theft is wrong. This is mere breach of contract, whether it's wrong depends on the contract.
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