I spent $0 of IRL cash on the mount, because again I had 1.75mil gold already available to just grab 7 tokens from the AH since again getting gold even casually is ridiculously easy and takes almost no time just by playing the game.
Not sure, where you got confused about the way tokens works (the people selling the tokens in-game spent IRL money, not the ones buying tokens in-game).
Tokens are bought and sold regularly before the mount was a thing and will continue to be bought and sold long after the folks complaining about the mount have long forgotten this silly argument.