Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide: Token Hubs for AI Token Exchange

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)

After exploring the pre-market spread market for crypto stocks in "The Crypto Bear Market Startup Guide, Part One," Kalshi immediately completed a new funding round at a $22 billion valuation, significantly elevating its market position.

The second direction of this series focuses on a more everyday, higher-frequency, and often overlooked niche area—AI token intermediaries—that even crypto-native users who regularly interact with AI tend to ignore.

This niche itself is not new. Over the past two years, numerous intermediary services emphasizing "low-cost APIs" have emerged both domestically and internationally—from 9.9 RMB monthly cards on Xianyu to widely whispered-about "reliable channels" within developer communities—making this business far larger than most people realize. However, from a cryptocurrency market perspective, it has two severely underestimated dimensions: first, directly purchasing AI tokens with cryptocurrency is an underdeveloped structural entry point; second, bundling and selling domestic models such as Qwen, Kimi, GLM, and Minimax to overseas users represents an underutilized "reverse export" pathway.

In later sections, we will also mention Alex Atallah, the elite entrepreneur who decisively exited OpenSea in 2022 and subsequently founded OpenRouter, and his cross-domain transformation. Not because the project itself is particularly legendary, but because it opens up a newly emerging, severely underestimated business pathway for crypto entrepreneurs—the yet-to-be-fully-connected bridge between Crypto Tokens and AI Tokens.

The AI Token relay is essentially an API aggregation and forwarding layer. Users obtain a unified key through the platform, which then forwards requests on their behalf to official channels such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

The demand is real: bypassing credit card registration barriers and reducing integration costs. It may seem low-barrier, but the underlying complexity runs deep.

According to tests conducted by the research team on 17 third-party API platforms, 45.83% exhibited "identity mismatch"—users paid for GPT-4 pricing but actually ran inexpensive open-source models, with performance differences reaching up to 40%, unnoticed by most users.

This explains why many ultra-low-cost platforms frequently disappear. It’s not active fraud—it’s that their upstream account pools suffer mass suspensions, causing their cost structure to collapse instantly. The large-scale account suspension wave triggered by the Claude protocol upgrade in March 2026 was a classic example of this chain reaction.

Three types of sources: “white goods” — legitimate corporate contract purchases; “gray goods” — bulk-registered account pools; “black goods” — black card top-ups or hacked accounts. The vast majority of ultra-low-price platforms rely on the latter two.

Users seek low prices, but behind low prices are unstable supply sources and hidden data risks. This contradiction currently has no solution.

OpenRouter is the most noteworthy case in this space. Founder Alex Atallah, co-founder and former CTO of OpenSea, holds a Stanford CS background and is an alum of both YC and HF0, among Forbes’ first NFT billionaires. In 2018, he co-founded OpenSea with Devin Finzer, achieving one of the most iconic wealth accumulations in crypto history by 2021. As the NFT market entered a prolonged downturn in 2022, Atallah shifted focus to AI infrastructure.

From the "unified trading layer" of NFT markets to the "unified routing layer" of LLMs, the product intuition remains consistent—building standardized, aggregated entry points atop fragmented supply sides.

OpenRouter now integrates with over 60 inference providers and 300+ models, serving more than 4.2 million users worldwide and connecting to over 250,000 applications. A unified OpenAI-compatible interface allows developers to access any major model with minimal friction.

In addition, crypto payment pathways are also a rarely explored area.

The Openrouter platform has also made it possible to purchase Credits with cryptocurrency via Coinbase Business Checkouts, allowing users to deposit USDC/ETH directly on-chain without going through traditional banking channels. Of course, crypto payment channels include an additional fee of approximately 5%, but for users seeking to avoid traditional payment friction, this premium is acceptable.

OpenRouter,APIMart.ai,cabbagewwc.com represent three distinct approaches in the current赛道.

OpenRouter follows a "crypto-native + global developers" approach, with its core strengths being compliance and founder credibility. APIMart differentiates itself through broad multimodal coverage and deep integration with Chinese models, including Qwen and ByteDance series, making it especially favorable for reverse outbound strategies. cabbagewwc represents a domestic developer hub, specializing in localized operations and RMB-denominated services, positioning it as the closest link to domestic model suppliers.

Together, these three elements form a complete value chain spanning sourcing, protocol aggregation, and crypto payments. Currently, no player has fully integrated all these stages.

If crypto payments represent "entry differentiation," then reverse outbound expansion belongs to "supply differentiation."

Based on the observation that refined processing yields significantly higher profits than crude processing, the profit margin for the latter is naturally even more astonishing.

Based on data from early 2026: Qwen3.5's price for one million tokens is as low as 0.8 RMB, approximately $0.11, which is 1/18 the cost of Gemini 3 Pro and more than 27 times lower than Claude Sonnet 4.6's $3 input price.

GLM-5 achieved a score of 77.8% on the SWE-Bench Verified programming benchmark, surpassing Gemini 3 Pro and approaching Claude Opus 4.5, while its API pricing is only a fraction of the latter. Kimi K2.5 has generated more revenue in nearly 20 days since launch than its entire projected 2025 annual total.

These models have very limited availability overseas: registration barriers, payment restrictions, language interfaces, and information gaps among overseas developers regarding the capabilities of Chinese-developed models form an invisible barrier to entry.

The opportunity for reverse outbound transit hubs lies right here.

For specific implementation, consider bulk-purchasing model API credits in RMB within China, exposing an OpenAI-compatible interface via a protocol translation layer, and selling it to overseas developers and startups priced in USDT/USDC. Alibaba Cloud’s Bailian Coding Plan provides a cost reference: bundling four major models—Qwen3.5, GLM-5, MiniMax M2.5, and Kimi K2.5—new users can obtain 18,000 request credits for just 7.9 RMB in their first month. Pricing this offering in USD for international markets offers substantial profit potential.

Don't blindly cheer for bull markets. Before this business truly takes off, several barriers must be acknowledged.

Capital requirements. Bulk purchasing domestic model API quotas, building a technical forwarding layer, and maintaining overseas servers and crypto payment channels all require upfront capital investment. More critically, liquidity management—exchange rate fluctuations and friction in fund inflows and outflows between crypto receipts and RMB payments—can easily lead to cash flow issues without a mature funding turnover solution.

Resource channels. A stable domestic model API procurement channel is a core asset. Legitimate channels require establishing business partnerships with model providers or cloud platforms, which takes time and qualifications; the account pool approach carries ongoing risks of account bans and compliance issues. At the same time, the ability to reach overseas users is equally essential—cold starting on platforms like Twitter/X, Reddit, Discord, and Telegram presents a real barrier for teams without overseas community operation experience.

Legal compliance. Risks arise from both ends. The model’s terms of service restrict resale; the vast majority of major vendors explicitly prohibit commercial resale of APIs, leaving the account pool model in ongoing legal breach risk. Data security and cross-border compliance: selling domestic model services to overseas users involves compliance requirements for data transfers, which require careful evaluation under current regulatory conditions. Carno’s payment processing may also trigger VASP licensing requirements in certain jurisdictions.

Another point: There is already ample evidence in the industry that some intermediary platforms bundle and sell user prompt data for model training. This is not only a legal risk, but also a business time bomb that could instantly destroy user trust if exposed.

The barrier is not in technology, but in resource integration and risk management. Teams that can simultaneously master these four areas—domestic low-cost model procurement channels, OpenAI-compatible protocol conversion, crypto payment gateways, and overseas user operations—virtually do not exist in the market today.

This is both an opportunity and a practical challenge.

From Alex Atallah pivoting to found OpenRouter after the NFT downturn, to a group of 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 speculation or fundraising narratives, but generates real revenue through actual API call volumes.

Deep water doesn't mean you can't swim. The key is to measure how deep the water is before getting in.

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