Chinese developers are reportedly acquiring Anthropic’s Claude tokens at roughly ten percent of the official list price by circumventing the company’s access restrictions, according to The Decoder. This gray market operates through a network of transfer stations that bypass Anthropic’s geoblocking and selfie verification systems designed to restrict access from China.
The Decoder highlights that Anthropic’s stringent export controls and safety measures are being systematically undermined by this infrastructure. Analyst Zilan Qian warns that this circumvention not only weakens export control efforts but also compromises the integrity of Anthropic’s safety protocols.
For Japanese market participants, this development underscores the challenges global AI and crypto providers face in enforcing regional restrictions, which could influence regulatory approaches and market access strategies in Asia.