Original｜Odaily Planet Daily （@OdailyChina）
Author｜Wenser（@wenser 2010）
After discussing the pre-market price differences of coin stocks in the "Crypto Bear Market Entrepreneurship Guide Volume One," Kalshi quickly completed a new round of financing with a valuation of 22 billion dollars, and its market position rose accordingly.
The second direction of this series focuses on a more everyday, higher frequency, and more easily overlooked sub-sector by everyday and AI accompanying crypto natives—AI Token Transfer Station.
This track itself is not fresh. Over the past two years, a large number of transfer services with "low-cost API" as their selling point have emerged both domestically and internationally, from the 9.9 yuan monthly card on idle fish to the “stable channels” that are spread by word of mouth in various developer communities, the scale of this business has long exceeded most people's imagination. However, from the perspective of the crypto market, it has two severely underestimated dimensions: first, purchasing AI Tokens directly with cryptocurrency (Crypto Token) represents a structural entry yet to be fully developed; second, packaging and selling domestic low-cost models such as Qwen, Kimi, GLM, Minimax to overseas users is a "reverse output" path that has yet to become mainstream.
In the following text, we will also mention the cross-border transformation of "elite entrepreneur" Alex Atallah, who decisively left OpenSea in 2022 and subsequently founded OpenRouter. It is not that this project itself is legendary; rather, it opens a severely underestimated business idea for crypto circle entrepreneurs—a bridge conduit that has yet to be truly connected between Crypto Tokens and AI Tokens.
There are differences between Tokens: The underlying structure of AI x Crypto revolving door
The AI Token Transfer Station is essentially an API aggregation forwarding layer. Users obtain a unified key through the platform, which forwards requests to official channels such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
The demand is real: bypassing credit card registration thresholds and lowering access costs. It seems that the threshold isn't high, but the details are quite deep.
According to research team tests on 17 third-party API platforms, 45.83% encounter "identity mismatches"—users pay for GPT-4, but actually run on cheap open-source models, with performance discrepancies reaching up to 40%, most users are unaware.
This explains why many ultra-low-cost platforms frequently run away. It is not active fraud, but the upstream account pool faces mass bans, causing the cost structure to collapse in an instant. The wave of mass account bans triggered by the Claude protocol upgrade in March 2026 is a typical chain reaction.
Three types of sources: “white goods” corporate contracts for formal procurement, “grey goods” bulk registered account pools, and “black goods” recharge with black cards or stolen accounts. The vast majority of ultra-low-cost platforms rely on the latter two types.
Users pursue low prices, but behind that are unstable sources and hidden data risks. This contradiction currently has no solution.
Three doors of the Token Transfer Station: regular troops, partners and solo combat
OpenRouter is the most noteworthy case in this track. Founder Alex Atallah is the co-founder and former CTO of OpenSea, has a CS background from Stanford, is a dual alumni of YC and HF0, and is one of the first NFT billionaires on Forbes. In 2018, he co-founded OpenSea with Devin Finzer, completing one of the most representative wealth accumulations in crypto industry history by 2021. After the NFT market entered a long downturn in 2022, Atallah shifted to AI infrastructure.
From the "unified trading layer" of the NFT market to the "unified routing layer" of LLMs, the product intuition is consistent——establishing a standardized aggregation entry on a fragmented supply side.
OpenRouter now connects over 60 inference service providers, over 300 models, with more than 4.2 million global users and over 250,000 connected applications. A unified OpenAI-compatible interface allows developers to access any mainstream model with minimal friction.
Moreover, the crypto payment pathway is also a field rarely explored.
The OpenRouter platform has also opened a rare channel for purchasing Credits with cryptocurrency via Coinbase Business Checkouts, allowing users to recharge directly in USDC/ETH on-chain, without going through traditional bank channels. Of course, the crypto payment channel will also charge an additional fee of about 5%, but for users looking to avoid traditional payment friction, this premium is within an acceptable range.
OpenRouter,APIMart.ai, and cabbagewwc.com represent three different entry approaches in the current track.
OpenRouter follows the "crypto-native + global developer" route, with core cards in compliance and founder credibility. APIMart differentiates in the breadth of multimodal coverage and depth of integration of domestic models, having integrated series such as Qwen and ByteDance, which are especially friendly to reverse outbound strategies. Cabbagewwc represents domestic developers turning to the transfer station, delving into localized operations and RMB pricing services, being the closest link to domestic model sources.
The combination of the three constitutes a complete value chain from source procurement, protocol aggregation to crypto payment. Currently, no player in this chain has truly connected all links.
The reverse output path of Tokens: Selling domestic cost-effective models to the world
If crypto payment represents "entry differentiation," then reverse outbound belongs to "source differentiation."
According to the attempt that processed profits far exceed raw processing, the profit price difference of the latter is naturally more astonishing.
Based on data from early 2026: the price of Qwen 3.5 million Tokens is as low as 0.8 RMB, about 0.11 USD, which is 1/18 of Gemini 3 Pro’s price, with a contrast exceeding 27 times compared to the input price of 3 USD for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
GLM-5 achieved a 77.8% score on the programming benchmark SWE-Bench Verified, surpassing Gemini 3 Pro and nearing Claude Opus 4.5, with its API price merely a fraction of the latter. Kimi K2.5 has accumulated revenue exceeding that of the entire year of 2025 within nearly 20 days of launch.
The availability of these models overseas is relatively low: registration thresholds, payment restrictions, language interfaces, and the information gap of overseas developers regarding domestic model capabilities constitute an invisible entry barrier.
The survival space for the reverse outbound transfer station lies here.
Specifically, one might consider bulk purchasing model API quotas in RMB domestically, exposing OpenAI-compatible interfaces via a protocol conversion layer, pricing in USDT/USDC, and selling to overseas developers and startups. Alibaba Cloud’s Hundred Refinements Coding Plan provides a cost reference: packaging the four major models Qwen 3.5, GLM-5, MiniMax M2.5, and Kimi K2.5, for new users the first month only requires 7.9 RMB to obtain 18,000 request quotas. Mapped to the overseas market and sold in USD, the profit margin can be considerable.
Three heavy concerns behind the opportunity: funds, resources, and compliance thresholds
It's not aimless optimism. Before this business is truly realized, several thresholds must be faced.
Funding threshold. Bulk purchasing domestic model API quotas, building technical forwarding layers, maintaining overseas servers, and crypto payment channels all require upfront capital investment. More critically, liquidity management—exchange rate fluctuations and deposit/withdrawal friction exist between crypto receipts and RMB payments, and without a mature fund circulation plan, payment terms can easily become problematic.
Resource channels. Stable domestic model API procurement channels are core assets. Formal channels mean establishing business cooperation with model manufacturers or cloud platforms, which takes time and qualifications; the account pool route faces continuous risk of bans and compliance issues. At the same time, the ability to reach overseas users is equally indispensable—the cold start of channels such as Twitter/X, Reddit, Discord, and Telegram poses a real barrier for teams without overseas community operation experience.
Legal compliance. Risks come from both ends. Resale restrictions on model service terms—most mainstream manufacturers explicitly prohibit API commercial resale, while account pool models continuously face contractual breach risks legally. Data security and cross-border compliance, selling domestic model services to overseas users involves data export compliance requirements, which needs careful assessment under the current regulatory environment. Carno receipts may also trigger VASP licensing requirements in certain jurisdictions.
Another point: there is sufficient evidence in the industry showing that some transfer platforms package and sell user prompt data for model training. This is not only a legal risk but a commercial landmine that could directly destroy user trust once exposed.
The threshold is not in technology, but in resource integration and risk management. Teams that can simultaneously do well in these four areas—domestic low-cost model procurement channels, OpenAI-compatible protocol conversion, crypto payment channels, and overseas user operation—are virtually non-existent in the current market.
This is both an opportunity and the actual difficulty.
From opening memberships to Token transfer, the AI sales landscape is expanding
From Alex Atallah's transition to founding OpenRouter after the NFT tide receded to a group of domestic developers quietly building a transfer station serving tens of thousands of users, the existence of this business itself serves as a realistic answer to the question of “what can survive in a bear market”: not relying on Token speculation, not relying on financing narratives, but generating real income through real API usage.
Deep water does not mean one cannot swim. The key is to measure how deep the water is before jumping in.
Recommended Reading
Crypto Bear Market Entrepreneurship Guide Volume One: Pre-Market Price Differences of Coin Stocks
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