> but since as a customer you can't just turn around and sell a token yourself for more than you paid
You can't purchase a dollar for 90 cents and sell it for 95 if the original seller keeps selling for 90.
If you make a trillion dollars by allowing other people to make a profit through arbitrage, that trillion dollars is meaningless.
If you subsidize a product such that you spend more money producing it than your customers pay you, but that product is NOT something they can sell on directly and pocket the difference, then selling a trillion dollars of it is still impressive because it demonstrates that you have a product people assign a trillion dollars of value to.