Whoever defines the Token holds the minting rights of the AI era.

Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow

Original Title: Tokens don’t need Chinese names, but the business behind them does

Recently, you might have noticed something: people are starting to discuss what to call tokens.

Professor Yang Bin from Tsinghua University published an article titled “Deciding the Chinese translation of ‘Token’ is Urgent”; related translation questions on Zhihu have garnered 250,000 views, with comments offering ideas.

In the past two or three years, the domestic AI community has been simply calling it “Token,” with no issues. Why is a Chinese name suddenly needed?

The direct reason may be that after this year’s Spring Festival, ordinary people learned for the first time that tokens cost money.

OpenClaw turns AI from chatting into work, with a single task burning through hundreds of thousands of tokens, and bills skyrocketing; cloud providers are also announcing price hikes, with tokens as the billing unit.

At the same time, tokens are appearing in places they shouldn’t have before.

At the GTC conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Silicon Valley has already asked during interviews, “How many tokens can I get in this job?” and suggested including tokens in engineers’ compensation;

OpenAI founder Sam Altman went even further, believing that tokens will replace universal basic income, and everyone will receive not money, but computing power.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that China’s daily token consumption rose from 100 billion at the start of 2024 to over 40 trillion by September 2025, reaching 180 trillion in February this year. The People’s Daily published an article early this year titled “A Casual Talk on Morphemes,” explaining what this term means.

A technical term, once it enters cloud service bills, recruitment packages, and official statistics, it can no longer be called by its English name.

The question is, what should it be called?

If this were just a translation issue, there has long been an answer. In 2021, the academic community in China assigned a name to “Token”: “Morpheme.”

But no one paid attention because, at that time, “Token” was still just an internal technical term.

Now, it’s different.

The word “Token” itself is a universal container. Previously, people in the crypto world called it “token,” security experts called it “token,” and AI researchers called it “morpheme.” The same English word, depending on how it’s translated into Chinese, belongs to different domains.

Thus, a naming contest for “Token” has begun.

Business needs discourse rights

How a word is translated is usually a matter for linguists. But this time, almost no linguists are involved.

The most prominent proposed name is “ZhiYuan” (Intelligent Element).

The most active supporter is a media outlet called “XinZhiYuan” (New Intelligence Element). If “Token” is officially translated as “ZhiYuan,” this company’s brand name overlaps with the industry’s core terminology, effectively giving every discussion about “Token” free advertising for them.

Their promotional article ends honestly: “We suggest translating ‘Token’ as the industry consensus: ZhiYuan. Leave the ‘New’ to us.”

According to the same article, Wang Xiaochuan, founder of Baichuan Intelligence, commented: “Calling it ZhiYuan is quite good.”

He works on large models, so calling the token “ZhiYuan” makes sense. Instead of a billing unit, each computation output becomes a “basic unit of intelligence.”

Selling tokens is selling traffic; selling ZhiYuan is selling intelligence. The valuation stories are entirely different.

Professor Yang Bin from Tsinghua University proposed “MoYuan” (Model Element). “Model” corresponds to the model; whoever owns the large model controls the “MoYuan” production rights. Naming it in the model direction shifts pricing power to the model companies.

Some also advocate “FuYuan” (Symbol Element), returning to the fundamental computer science definition: a token is a symbol processing unit, unrelated to intelligence or models.

Technically the cleanest, but the proposer is an independent tech author without company backing or capital support. In this discussion, they have almost no voice.

The direction of the name influences the industry narrative, which in turn affects where the money flows.

A distant example: when Facebook rebranded as Meta, “metaverse” transformed from a sci-fi concept into a valuation story for a company; a more recent example: China consumes 180 trillion tokens daily, the world’s largest, but what this word is called, how to define it, and who defines it, still remain unresolved…

The world’s largest token-consuming country hasn’t even decided what to call what it consumes.

But, in fact, this term already has a Chinese name.

In 2021, Professor Qiu Xipeng from Fudan University translated “Token” as “Ciyuan” (Morpheme), which was accepted by academia and included in textbooks. At that time, no one discussed it because “Token” was still worthless.

Now, “Token” is valuable.

It is the billing unit for cloud services, the revenue metric for large model companies, and a core indicator for measuring AI industry scale at the national level. Media, industry leaders, and professors have all come forward, each with their preferred name and reasoning.

Translation has never been the problem. The real question is: when did this word start to be worth money?

Jensen Huang didn’t participate in the Chinese naming discussion at GTC. He did something simpler: raising a champion’s belt with “Token King” printed on it, declaring data centers as “Token factories.”

Who produces tokens, who defines tokens. He doesn’t care what the name is.

Tokens, land grabbing, and minting

So, the real issue worth serious thought isn’t which translation is better.

After “calorie” was established, the entire food industry’s pricing, labeling, and regulatory systems were built around it. After “traffic” was defined in China’s telecom industry, operators billed, competed, and designed packages based on traffic, and the entire business model revolved around these two words for over a decade.

Tokens are now following the same path.

It has become the billing unit for cloud services, the revenue metric for large model companies, and a core indicator for national AI industry scale. Venture capitalists are even discussing whether investment funds can be directly paid in tokens.

Once a word becomes a measure of money, naming it isn’t just translation—it’s minting.

Calling it “ZhiYuan” grants the minting rights to AI narratives; whoever tells the story of intelligence benefits. Calling it “MoYuan” grants the minting rights to model companies; whoever owns large models can print money. Calling it “FuYuan” returns minting rights to the technology itself, but technology can’t speak for itself.

The “Morpheme” term from 2021 academia wasn’t paid attention to, not because of poor translation, but because back then, this “coin” wasn’t worth anything.

Now, it’s valuable. Everyone wants to carve their name on it.