Tokens called a great financial invention as billing decouples from value
JoshPurtell · x · 2026-11-07
A thread on token billing economics: tokens are 'one of the great financial inventions' — a metered resource whose consumption is only loosely correlated with value created. Josh Purtell adds that the industry should standardize a billing tokenizer, and that linear pricing creates demand distortion: users pay no marginal cost for waste, so agent harnesses burn 1M tokens when optimized setups like Codex run at 300k.
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