Original|Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser 2010)
After discussing the pre-market price difference market for crypto assets in "Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide Part 1," Kalshi promptly completed a new round of funding at a $220 billion valuation, subsequently elevating its market position.
The second direction in this series focuses on a more niche, higher-frequency, yet easily overlooked segment for crypto natives who live alongside AI daily—the AI Token Relay Station.
This sector itself is not new. Over the past two years, numerous relay services selling "low-cost APIs" have emerged domestically and internationally, from monthly cards for 9.9 RMB on Xianyu to "stable channels" whispered about in various developer communities. The scale of this business has long exceeded most people's imaginations. However, from the perspective of the crypto market, it has two severely underestimated dimensions: First, using cryptocurrency (Crypto Token) to directly purchase AI Token is a structural entry point that has not been fully exploited; second, packaging and selling domestic models like Qwen, Kimi, GLM, and Minimax to overseas users is a "reverse export" path that has yet to become mainstream.
Later, we will also mention the cross-border transformation of "elite entrepreneur" Alex Atallah, who decisively left OpenSea in 2022 and subsequently founded OpenRouter. Not because the project itself is legendary, but importantly, it opens up a new, severely underestimated business path for crypto entrepreneurs—the yet-to-be-truly-connected pipeline between Crypto Token and AI Token.
The Gap Between Tokens: The Underlying Structure of the AI x Crypto Revolving Door
The AI Token relay station is essentially an API aggregation and forwarding layer. Users obtain a unified key through the platform, and the platform forwards requests to official channels like OpenAI and Anthropic on their behalf.
The demand is real: bypassing credit card registration barriers and reducing access costs. It seems low门槛, but the water runs deep inside.
According to a research team's tests on 17 third-party API platforms, 45.83% exhibited "identity mismatch"—users paid the GPT-4 price but actually ran cheap open-source models, with performance gaps up to 40%, which most users couldn't detect.
This explains why many ultra-low-price platforms frequently shut down. It's not active fraud; it's the upstream account pool getting banned en masse, causing the cost structure to collapse instantly. The large-scale ban wave triggered by Claude's protocol upgrade in March 2026 is a typical chain reaction.
Three types of supply sources: "White goods" from正规 enterprise contracts, "grey goods" from批量 registered account pools, and "black goods" from black card top-ups or stolen accounts. The vast majority of ultra-low-price platforms rely on the latter two.
Users pursue low prices, but behind low prices lie unstable supply sources and hidden data risks. This contradiction currently has no solution.
The Three Gates of Token Relay Stations: The正规 Army, Partners, and Lone Wolves
OpenRouter is the most notable case in this sector. Founder Alex Atallah, co-founder and former CTO of OpenSea, Stanford CS background, alumnus of both YC and HF0, one of Forbes' first NFT billionaires. Co-founded OpenSea with Devin Finzer in 2018, completing one of the most representative wealth accumulations in crypto history by 2021. In 2022, as the NFT market entered a prolonged downturn, Atallah pivoted to AI infrastructure.
From the "unified trading layer" for NFT markets to the "unified routing layer" for LLMs, the product intuition is consistent—building a aggregated entry point on top of a fragmented supply side.
OpenRouter now integrates over 60 inference providers, 300+ models, has over 4.2 million global users, and powers over 250,000 applications. A unified OpenAI-compatible interface allows developers to access any mainstream model with minimal friction.
Furthermore, the Crypto payment path is another area few have ventured into.
The OpenRouter platform also uniquely offers the option to purchase Credits via Coinbase Business Checkouts using cryptocurrency. Users can recharge on-chain directly with USDC/ETH, bypassing traditional banking channels. Of course, the Crypto payment channel charges an additional ~5% fee, but for users avoiding traditional payment friction, the premium is within an acceptable range.
OpenRouter, APIMart.ai, and cabbagewwc.com represent three current approaches to entering the sector.
OpenRouter takes the "crypto-native + global developer" route, its core cards being compliance and founder credibility. APIMart differentiates itself with its breadth of multimodal coverage and depth of integration with domestic Chinese models, having接入 series like Qwen and ByteDance, which is especially friendly for reverse export strategies. cabbagewwc represents domestic developer-oriented relay stations,深耕 local operations and RMB-denominated services, and is the closest link to domestic model supply sources.
Together, the three form a complete value chain from supply procurement, protocol aggregation, to crypto payments. On this chain, no player has yet truly connected all the links.
The Reverse Export Path for Tokens: Selling Domestic Cost-Effective Models to the World
If Crypto payments are about "entry differentiation," then reverse export is about "supply differentiation."
Following the常识 that value-added processing profits far exceed those of rough processing, the profit margin for the latter is naturally even more astonishing.
Taking early 2026 data as a reference: Qwen3.5 costs as low as 0.8 RMB per million tokens, approximately $0.11 USD, which is 1/18th the price of Gemini 3 Pro, and over 27 times cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4.6's $3 input price.
GLM-5 scored 77.8% on the programming benchmark SWE-Bench Verified, surpassing Gemini 3 Pro and approaching Claude Opus 4.5, while its API price is only a fraction of the latter's. Kimi K2.5's cumulative revenue in nearly 20 days since launch has already exceeded that of the entire year 2025.
The accessibility of these models overseas is relatively extremely low: registration barriers, payment restrictions, language interfaces, and the information gap海外 developers have regarding the capabilities of domestic models create an invisible barrier to entry.
This is precisely the survival space for reverse export relay stations.
The specific operation could involve bulk purchasing model API quotas domestically in RMB, exposing an OpenAI-compatible interface through a protocol conversion layer, pricing in USDT/USDC, and selling to overseas developers and startup teams. Alibaba Cloud Bailian Coding Plan provides a cost reference: the Qwen3.5, GLM-5, MiniMax M2.5, and Kimi K2.5 models are bundled together; new users only need 7.9 RMB for the first month to get 18,000 request credits. Mapping this to the overseas market and pricing in USD offers considerable profit margins.
Three Hidden Concerns Behind the Opportunity: Capital, Resources, and Compliance Barriers
Not盲目 bullish. Before this business can be truly implemented, several barriers must be faced head-on.
Capital Barrier. Bulk purchasing domestic model API quotas, building the technical forwarding layer, maintaining overseas servers and Crypto payment channels all require upfront capital investment. More critically is liquidity management—exchange rate fluctuations and entry/exit friction exist between Crypto receipts and RMB payments. Without a mature capital turnover plan, cash flow periods can easily become problematic.
Resource Channels. Stable domestic model API procurement channels are core assets.正规 channels mean establishing business cooperation with model vendors or cloud platforms, requiring time and qualifications; the account pool route faces continuous ban risks and compliance hidden dangers. Simultaneously, the ability to reach overseas users is equally indispensable—cold starting on channels like Twitter/X, Reddit, Discord, Telegram is a real barrier for teams without overseas community operation experience.
Legal Compliance. Risks come from both ends. Resale restrictions in model service terms: the vast majority of mainstream vendors explicitly prohibit commercial resale of APIs, keeping the account pool model in a state of contractual违约 risk legally. Data security and cross-border compliance: selling domestic model services to overseas users involves data出境 compliance requirements, which need careful evaluation in the current regulatory environment. Crypto收款 may also trigger VASP licensing requirements in some jurisdictions.
Another point: There is ample evidence within the industry that some relay platforms bundle and sell user prompt data for model training. This is not only a legal risk but also a commercial landmine that can directly destroy user trust once exposed.
The barrier is not technical; it lies in resource integration and risk management. Teams that can simultaneously handle these four things well—domestic cheap model procurement channels, OpenAI-compatible protocol conversion, Crypto payment channels, overseas user operation—are almost non-existent in the current market.
This is both the opportunity and the现实 difficulty.
From Reselling Memberships to Token Relays: The AI Sales Landscape is Expanding
From Alex Atallah's pivot to founding OpenRouter after the NFT tide receded, to domestic developers quietly building relay stations serving tens of thousands of users, the very existence of this business is a practical answer to the question "what can survive in a bear market": it doesn't rely on Token hype, doesn't rely on funding narratives, but generates real revenue from real API call volume.
Deep water doesn't mean you can't swim in it. The key is to measure how deep the water is before diving in.
Recommended Reading
Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide Part 1: The Pre-Market Price Difference Market for Crypto Assets vs. Stocks
From 0.5 RMB per kWh Chinese Electricity to 45 RMB API Export Deals: Token is Becoming the New Currency Unit
After Using Various Unscrupulous Relays, I Flipped the Table! A Guide to Building a Relay Station from Scratch!
