Pokemon TRADING Card Game, except I don't have the resources to trade.

The trading system came out today, and needless to say it is a big slap in the face. I was looking forward to trading so I could complete my Pokedex, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to trade. With the high demand in resources (trading tokens), we need to destroy 4 cards of equivalent rarity to trade a single card. That is 5 cards for a single one. And as a free to play player, I don't have enough duplicates of 3 diamond cards and up to do a single EX trade. This is completely absurd and backwards. I know I've been fairly unlucky in my pulls, which is why I don't have a lot of rare cards, but nothing justifies such a greedy system.
Why not give free trade tokens through daily quests instead? Or let us trade in the lower tier cards? Or battle victory rewards? There is currently no point in battling, as the rewards are non-existent… Give the people more reason to open the app and play the game, make it more accessible! All they've done is alienate most of their players.

The worst part is I was considering purchasing premium with the new set coming up. Will not be putting any money into a company that treats its players this way.