Comment by JonathanCreek

This is an excellent way of looking at it: buying something for the long term (computing capacity) and selling it in short-term, smaller pieces (tokens). The risk is that the obligation is long term while the income is short term.

It's like signing a 10-year lease on an apartment in NYC and renting it out by the day on Airbnb. It may or may not work.

On top of that, there's the question of how you treat the remodeling of that apartment (model training). If it benefits you for years to come, it's an investment that you depreciate. If your guests frequently trash the apartment, or tastes change (the model becomes obsolete quickly), that remodeling (training) is just a cost.