That then raises another question: Why call it "4000 + 1000" for $5 and not just say it's 5000? Not to you, specifically, but in general.
It all feels a bit...shady. Because if at its base value Ink is indeed 1250 per $1, and Tapas is taking 15 or 30% (whether it was for support or ads)...what about the amount lost in the conversion? Sure, if I buy $50 worth of Ink, it translates penny for penny to the artist. But if I buy even just $20 worth, which results in 22,500 ink, for the artist that is $18. Tapas makes $2 off that one transaction before it takes its official cut.
One person doing that, it might be easy to shrug off. It's just 10%, right? But that scales.
At the "most popular" level of $10. That translates to 10,500 Ink which is $8.40 for the artist. It seems like less with just $1.60 going to Tapas. But that's now 16% of the total.
Give that's their most popular, let's say 5,000 people go for that option. Each one just puts in $10 to get that Ink for a total of $50,000. With a loss of 16% that's $8,000 that gets "lost" in the conversion.
This is all before that 15% of Tapas' official share or the fees based on where the Ink came from (mobile, web, etc).
So if they're already taking a sizeable chunk off the back end, why is it necessary to have this built-in "loss" on the front end?