this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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What determines the value of a token? Is it Standley Nickels calculation, or did they actually attempt to tie it out to infrastructure and operating costs? If the latter, then anyone using these systems needs to be prepared for a serious rug pull as that’s squarely in “the first hit is free” territory.
They wanted companies to normalise a dollar spend on tokens equivalent to half a dev salary per dev.
They want to pay you in it too
That doesn’t answer the question. What determines “$1800 worth of tokens”? Is that value calculated from computer time-infrastructure cost? Is it what they think an equivalent of work would be for the time it takes the query to run? Or is it an entirely arbitrary number?
If the last one, most likely they’re running at a loss and it’s gonna bite them hard when the bill is due for infrastructure.
If I recall, it was something Ed Zitron said but I can't find the quote, so it might not be. The implication that the cost of delivering that $20 user account was approximately $1800 worth of compute.