The AI Credit Resale Economy

(vectoral.com)

56 points | by mlenhard 1 hour ago

8 comments

  • Aurornis 19 minutes ago
    The original article linked in the opening has more context https://vectoral.com/blog/token-relay-market

    People trading their unused credits feels more genuine, although still in violation of the agreements. The person who got into YC Startup School who was trying to resell the $2500 of credits was interesting. It wouldn’t be that hard for OpenAI to identify the IP addresses of the relays and start flagging accounts, tracing it back to the source. Risking burning your bridges with YC for a relatively small profit is a questionable decision.

    The original article showed discounts ranging all the way up to 98%. At those levels it’s obviously not people reselling anything. It’s either sourced from stolen API keys, bought with stolen credit cards, or acquired through automated sign up of trial accounts if you’re actually getting the API you request.

    I would expect a lot of them are reselling a different API. Sign up for Anthropic tokens and get Deepseek responses instead.

  • arjie 43 minutes ago
    Yunwu.ai was a nice way to get ultra-cheap tokens that someone will probably spy on you with, but they no longer offer US models.

    At first I thought it was so people could steal the traces, but now I wonder if this isn't just laundering startup credits for dollars.

    • npn 31 minutes ago
      There are like thousands sites with similar features all using newapi core.

      You can easily find them in Chinese tech forum linux.do

  • ander33 7 minutes ago
    This would be a fantastic method of getting data for distillation, would be surprised if that's not why the tokens are so cheap
  • fg137 7 minutes ago
    These are amateurs compared to what's happening in China.
  • TZubiri 36 minutes ago
    Men breaching Sauron's ToS by reselling their nine rings of power, and they think they are beating the system.
  • topbanana 38 minutes ago
    So are they stealing from their employers or is something else going on?
    • huflungdung 37 minutes ago
      Stolen credit cards

      Demo accounts

      Free trials

      Unlimited chat relays (eg chatgpt chat)

      Leaked company credentials

      Etc

      • notpushkin 34 minutes ago
        And I’m pretty sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
  • toomuchtodo 52 minutes ago
    Cool to see my thesis validated.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664223

  • bix6 35 minutes ago
    > CREDITS FROM YC STARTUP SCHOOL

    Join YC, get free shit from the network, profit. Nice.

    • notpushkin 30 minutes ago
      > CREDITS FROM YC STARTUP SCHOOL

      Is that still a thing? I’ve thought they’ve discontinued the deals section. (There are a lot of other ways to get a startup grant, of course.)

    • pocksuppet 22 minutes ago
      What will you pitch to YC to get accepted?