obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
7:18 PM · Jun 24, 2026 · 629.3K Views
Rohit Krishnan warns unauthorized Chinese resellers offering heavily discounted Claude API access may be committing model-substitution fraud
Resellers allegedly swap Claude Opus with GLM or DeepSeek.
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Many users praised Chinese grey-market resellers for offering cheap Claude tokens as a win-win for affordability and open-source data, while others condemned the practice as fraudulent scams or responded with racial insults.
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VIEWS636.5KBOOKMARKS499LIKES1.3KRETWEETS125REPLIES58
Lenny Bogdonoff@rememberlenny
TIL
1dViews 636.5KLikes 1.3KBookmarks 499
Flo Crivello@Altimor
You honestly have to hand it to the Chinese for turning fraud into a scaled operation. At Uber, we found out some Chinese companies *raised VC money* off a business model of "we defraud Uber" (we were spending $30m+ / week subsidizing the Chinese market at the peak, so their "TAM" was $1.5B). When we cracked down on the fraud, some deactivated drivers came to our in-person support center to complain. We pointed out they were defrauding us; they didn't seem to see the problem. It culminated into a hostage situation(!) where they barricaded themselves into the greenlight hub and forbid any employee from leaving for close to 24h. (Shockingly: I just looked it up and found out this hasn't been reported on before. Ex-Uber China people please chime in!)
Lenny Bogdonoff@rememberlenny
TIL
10hViews 137.9KLikes 1.1KBookmarks 421
Chubby♨️@kimmonismus
There may be an entire grey-market economy around Claude access in China: resellers allegedly pool Claude Max accounts, operate bot networks, and sell access far below official API prices.
The more interesting claim: user logs and reasoning traces may be resold as training data.
If true, this is not just API abuse but model access arbitrage turning frontier AI usage into a shadow data pipeline.
Lenny Bogdonoff@rememberlenny
TIL
1dViews 36.7KLikes 324Bookmarks 93
Lisan al Gaib@scaling01
that's what people are missing
china bros have trillions of claude and chatti tokens
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
21hViews 24.2KLikes 186Bookmarks 36
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
it'll be so funny if Dario is done in by his own racism. If Claude plans were directly accessible in China, people would just use that. But they go through the scammy intermediary which harvests interactions at scale and resells to labs. Not sure how legit, but would make sense.
ивус@ogivus
Псс, не хочешь немного токенов?
В Китае процветает чёрный рынок токенов для ИИ, который позволяет получать доступ к Claude на 93% дешевле, чем официально. Чтобы добиться такого, китайские «барыги» токенов используют подход «Одна рыба — три блюда» (一鱼三吃):
> Первое блюдо — они скупают аккаунты с корпоративными скидками, а также применяют метод APImaxxing. То есть, оформляют подписки с безлимитным планом за $200 и делят его между сотнями пользователей по часовым квотам
> Второе блюдо — подмена моделей. Пользователь считает, что отправляет запросы к премиальной Claude Opus 4.8, а на деле зачастую ему отвечает дешёвая Claude Haiku или китайские аналоги вроде Qwen
> Третье блюдо (основное) — эти сервисы сохраняют абсолютно все запросы пользователей и ответы Claude, а затем отправляют китайским лабораториям для обучения местных ИИ-моделей или используются для мошенничества. Да, злоумышленники выбирают из логов личную информацию, чтобы потом шантажировать или скамить
При этом важный момент: Claude официально не работает в Китае и жестко борется с пользователям оттуда, поэтому все токены идут от так называемых Transfer Stations (中转站). Это прокси-серверы, которые ранжируются системами чат-ботов по цене и времени аптайма.
Transfer Stations же получают доступ к токенам Claude, обманывая систему верификации личности от Anthropic. Для этого специальные сотрудники ездят по странам Африки и Азии, скупая данные обычных людей, которые в будущем используют для подтверждения личности. Кроме того, в ход идут ворованные кредитки.
Весь трафик идёт через VPN-сервера в Гонконге и Сингапуре. Благодаря этому Сингапур стал мировым лидером по использованию Claude на душу населения.
19hViews 11.8KLikes 96Bookmarks 18
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
Anon why do you think you're getting authentic Claude Opus with a 93% discount on a shady Chinese website? can you even pay for it to test?
Lisan al Gaib@scaling01
that's what people are missing
china bros have trillions of claude and chatti tokens
20hViews 10.6KLikes 69Bookmarks 17
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48667495
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
1dViews 21.4KLikes 50Bookmarks 23
👩💻 Paige Bailey@DynamicWebPaige
😅 And this is honestly only scratching the surface. Whoever is able to pinpoint and prevent fraudulent accounts and reselling behaviors will be a hero in this industry, for the model providers!
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
18hViews 4KLikes 17Bookmarks 5
François Fleuret@francoisfleuret
I like how it's like buying food for your racing horse and it is probably laced with the dumbest crap.
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
23hViews 4.8KLikes 32Bookmarks 3
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
I want to buy a round of drinks for fun builders w/ this months X earnings (this post will probably be ~$50)
Who's in for July happy hour?
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
11hViews 4KLikes 14Bookmarks 1
Alex Atallah@alexatallah
Why subscription discounts are not durable
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
17hViews 4.5KLikes 22Bookmarks 2
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
A market realist, an open source idealist, a cyberpunk doomscroller and a Chinese bot powered by Minimax resold as Claude walk into a bar…
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
Anon why do you think you're getting authentic Claude Opus with a 93% discount on a shady Chinese website? can you even pay for it to test?
18hViews 2.5KLikes 15Bookmarks 3
Marco Mascorro@Mascobot
Wow, there’s a whole market for these tokens
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
obvious in retrospect but I had no idea there was a black market for tokens
14hViews 2.5KLikes 10Bookmarks 2
rohit@krishnanrohit
My bet is that this is not really true as stated at scale, and the resellers are doing some version of fraud (calling it Opus and serving GLM) instead if at all they're reliably working.
Lenny Bogdonoff@rememberlenny
TIL
16hViews 1.3KLikes 9Bookmarks 2
Greg Kamradt@GregKamradt
@DynamicWebPaige I’d love to know who the named person at Anthropic who’s job it is to fix this - fascinating
👩💻 Paige Bailey@DynamicWebPaige
😅 And this is honestly only scratching the surface. Whoever is able to pinpoint and prevent fraudulent accounts and reselling behaviors will be a hero in this industry, for the model providers!
18hViews 834Likes 3Bookmarks 1
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
The economics is totally different. "Distillation attacks" is just millions of interactions; a scammy router can sell you *billions*. I wonder how it actually works out
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex
it'll be so funny if Dario is done in by his own racism. If Claude plans were directly accessible in China, people would just use that. But they go through the scammy intermediary which harvests interactions at scale and resells to labs. Not sure how legit, but would make sense.
19hViews 1.4KLikes 18Bookmarks 0
Vexxed@vexxed344
@GregKamradt "What you looking for? Claude Opus, Mythos? GPT5.5? Or are you into Gemini? Hey, I don't judge..."
23hViews 625Likes 14
Ivan Ilych@zhibuzhishang
@Altimor Apple in china the book tells a similar story about stores and people who were bussed from villages attacking store managers when Apple started cracking down on fraud
6hViews 971Bookmarks 2
Sam@Discoplomacy
@GregKamradt My colleague @ZilanQian wrote the piece quotes in this screenshot. Got picked up v widely. https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in
1dViews 257Bookmarks 2
George@odysseus0z
@GregKamradt Sir:
1dViews 665Likes 2Bookmarks 1
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