An Inside Look at the Token Reseller Market

# Summary Token resellers operate through a four-layer relay market that proxies traffic to U.S. AI models at steep discounts—up to 97.8% off official pricing—by sourcing virtual credit cards and bulk-registered accounts from upstream merchants. The ecosystem chains card merchants, account pools, relay services, and end-user developers together, with relays acting as intermediaries that aggregate hundreds of accounts and expose them through a single API at discounted rates. This widespread fraud infrastructure has become endemic to the token economy, with operators openly discussing methods on Chinese forums while companies lose millions daily to the abuse.