Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only half the reason it's expensive. The other reason is that it would likely take years to spend $4000 (plus the real cost of electricity) worth of tokens on a 3rd-party provider that's running a similar limited, DS Flash type model. By that time, the hardware will be obsolete, assuming it's still operational.
> it would likely take years to spend $4000 (plus the real cost of electricity) Since that cluster only yields 20-30 tok/s on that size of model, at least a decade before the hardware breaks-even with current token costs, and that's not counting electricity. Assuming continued downward pressure on token prices, and the cost of electricity, it never pays for itself.
Of course, it's not real unless I sell, and the value will eventually go down, but so far I have significant paper profits.
Also, DeepSeek token prices are continuing to _increase_, not decrease.