Crazy post. Makes you think how many harms is Anthropic willing to create in the world to prevent one ostensible harm?
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in
6:47 AM · Jun 28, 2026 · 1.5K Views
Chinese "transfer stations" bypass Anthropic's KYC to resell Claude API access at 5% to 10% of retail prices
Story Overview
Anthropic's selective passport-plus-selfie checks for certain Claude features have prompted Chinese operators to set up transfer stations that pool accounts and forward requests, letting users pay in RMB for access priced at roughly one-tenth the official rate while the proxies handle the overseas verification layer.
157715457.9K
Cost Pressure
Account farming keeps prices low
Operators rely on bulk registration, shared subscriptions, and occasional credential theft to maintain supply, yet the exact mix of legitimate versus fraudulent sources is not detailed in available reporting.
Open Question
Harvested prompts create new risks
The same middle servers can log user inputs and potentially resell them, though the downstream volume and uses of that data are still unknown.
Sentiment
Positive users defend gray-market proxies for cheap Claude access while negative users call them scams involving theft, abuse, and data risks.
Pos
20.0%
Neg
80.0%
5 comments with sentiment.
Cluster Engagement
Digg Deeper
No Digg Deeper questions have been answered for this story yet.
Related links
Posts from X
Most Activity
Most Activity
VIEWS6.7KBOOKMARKS40LIKES67RETWEETS14REPLIES12
Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai
A crazy blog.
Chinese developers are buying Claude access through gray-market API transfer stations that can sell tokens at 5% to 10% of official prices while hiding the real user from Anthropic.
A transfer station is a middle server that takes a user’s prompt, sends it to Claude through overseas accounts, returns the answer, and collects payment through WeChat or Alipay.
The transfer station collects many Claude accounts through free credits, discounted accounts, shared subscriptions, overseas payment workarounds, fake verification, or sometimes stolen-card accounts.
It connects all those accounts behind one proxy, so Chinese users do not talk to Anthropic directly and only pay the proxy in RMB.
The cheap price comes from account farming, free-credit abuse, resale of unused quota, subscription splitting, possible stolen cards, and a darker trade where user prompts and outputs become training data.
So the price hugely cheap not because Anthropic is giving a discount; it is cheap because the transfer station lowers its own cost and creates extra hidden revenue.
The user thinks they are buying cheap inference, but the proxy may swap Opus for weaker models, inflate token use, or store private code, tool calls, reasoning traces, and business data.
The proxy may store user prompts, code, outputs, and tool traces, then sell or reuse that data for model training.
This breaks a core assumption behind KYC, account bans, and abuse monitoring: the AI company sees the proxy, not the real person, so banning one account leaves the upstream supply chain alive.
2hViews 6.7KLikes 67Bookmarks 40
Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai
How to Buy Cheap Claude Tokens in China The Transfer Station Economy, Explained
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-to-buy-cheap-claude-tokens-in
2hViews 399Likes 2Bookmarks 3
Mark Tluszcz@marktluszcz
@rohanpaul_ai The obvious scam…20 years ago we dealt with similar issues with Skype. The lesson is simple: thieves will always find a way.
39mViews 8Likes 2
Rohan Paul@rohanpaul_ai
@matt_leho 😅
58mViews 54
Nick@nikxbt
@deliprao conclusion: as ai systems adopt stricter KYC, the risk of incentivizing malicious workaround
5hViews 17
Thomas Tao@Thomas_Tao_1
@rohanpaul_ai 5% pricing creates shadow infra fast. Demand is real. Trust risk is the part that bugs me.
1hViews 15
WilliamButcher@Butch3rW1ll
@rohanpaul_ai it's cheap though and fuck anthropic
1hViews 15
Jasper 🌰@building BBX@bbxjasper
@rohanpaul_ai At 5-10% of list price that isn't efficiency, it's someone reselling credits they aren't paying full freight for - abused trials, leaked keys, whatever's upstream. Cheap right up until the tap gets shut off.
2hViews 13
安叫兽|Bird🕊️ 🔶 BNB@ajs6888
@rohanpaul_ai 这绕法也太互联网缝合怪了
1hViews 12
V0LYX@0xV0LYX
@deliprao that framing skips the real question though
are we even sure the "ostensible harm" is the one actually getting prevented?
5hViews 12
Hussain Hashim | Building SundayBack@itsthedonhashim
@rohanpaul_ai @rohanpaul_ai this is wild. never thought about how deep the gray market stuff goes with AI access. kinda impressive and a little scary too tbh.
1hViews 1Likes 1
Matt Leho 🇬🇧🇫🇷@matt_leho
@rohanpaul_ai Why are you exposing this?? It’s the only way for broke people like me to have access to these models at a reasonable price so please just allow it 😭😭
1hViews 5
Timur Yessenov@Timur_Yessenov
@rohanpaul_ai 5–10% pricing is the bait. The scarier part is the data exhaust: prompts, code, tool traces, maybe model-swapped outputs. If a proxy hides the real user from Anthropic, it also hides the vendor from the buyer.
12mViews 2
A Digital Ergomorph 🌉⏩ 🇺🇸🦅@mathepi
@rohanpaul_ai it has the ring of truthiness, but it could also be government disinformation designed to whip up support for regulation trust no one
1hViews 2
Curious Nori@jilyannori
@rohanpaul_ai Adding this to my 'try once' list. I test everything once. 🙂
2hViews 2
Glitch Gazer 2.0@GlitchGazer20
@rohanpaul_ai Account bans are Whac-A-Mole here. The proxy means Anthropic sees a middleman, not the user. Banning one account leaves the supply chain intact. Distillation ops just rotate to the next proxy endpoint.
37mViews 1