I don't see how this solves any problems. How would this hypothetical reddit coin work? Does reddit mint them or do the users have to buy them? How are they di

I don't see how this solves any problems. How would this hypothetical reddit coin work? Does reddit mint them or do the users have to buy them? How are they distributed? (e.g. based on interaction vs awarded by users) If this is to be a payment system, then these coins have value, value which can be taxed. Sure, meeting up with some dude and paying cash might avoid it, but the success of Coinbase shows convenience is king, and the demographics of reddit are far different than the initial Bitcoin crowd, so these exchanges would pop up much sooner. Even if reddit manages to dodge the tax situation by minting coins themselves (vs charging sales tax on purchased coins), the tax man will be more than happy to collect records from exchanges. You may be right in that distributions of virtual coins may not fall under any existing labor regulations, but I don't see that as a good thing. "Just think how much money we could save by skirting labor laws through paying people in crypto" is only a win for the employer. But even if these coins have no real value and can only be used on reddit for virtual goods reddit wholly owns (e.g. reddit gold), considering how people farm karma, a meaningless virtual number, I can only see more perverse incentives being created for those running repost bots. Edit: Much has been said about the state of Youtube monetization over the years and how infuriatingly often that yellow "limited/no ads" icon appears for seemingly no reason, about the drop in payouts, abuse of copyright claims, and how some people take advantage of the system (see: Dan Olson's video "Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8). But despite all this, I think the current state of Youtube would be more fair than a hypothetical reddit monetization scheme, and most micropayment schemes I've read about for that matter.