Disclaimer: This a purely speculative post. I am in no way affiliated with Reddit.
Over the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the Kin project by Kik. I’ve been listening to many of Ted Livingston’s talks about the project, and the idea of integrating a cryptocurrency as a true revenue stream is extremely exciting to me. Moreover, this is the biggest platform to ever integrate a cryptocurrency as a core part of their platform. Naturally, I began to think of different ways mainstream platforms could make use of a cryptocurrency like Kik is doing.
If you don’t know much about the Kin project, Kik actually had the idea of integrating a cryptocurrency into their app for several years. Instead of jumping right in and creating a cryptocurrency right off the bat, Kik created “Kik Points” . Kik Points allowed users to earn points in various ways which they could then use to buy different stickers. After integrating the reward system into the app, Kik Points quickly grew very popular. According to Kin’s whitepaper (https://kin.kik.com/Kin%20Whitepaper%20v1.pdf), Kik Points was averaging 3 times the monthly transaction volume of Bitcoin. Due to the success of Kik Points, Kik then decided to develop their own Ethereum based token, Kin.
Now knowing how Kik slowly began integrating Kin into their app, what immediately struck me as a similar use case is Reddit Gold. Reddit Gold acts similarly to the early days of Kik Points where users could exchange a digital good that had some sort of underlying, hidden, financial value. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, has made it no secret that he is a huge fan of Ethereum.
Could Reddit Gold be the start of of Reddit’s future plan to integrate a cryptocurrency? I really think it makes sense. Instead of forcing users to buy Reddit Gold for $3.99, Reddit could open up the platform and allow users to be rewarded in a cryptocurrency for bringing value to the platform in various ways (a popular subreddit, popular post, funny comment, etc). User’s could then send this cryptocurrency back and forth to one another just like users already do with “gilding” (https://www.reddit.com/gilding/). If Reddit decides to hold onto 30% of their hypothetical cryptocurrency just like Kik will, it could be worth an extremely large amount of money in a few years time. Between the use case, the very supportive founder, and the early signs, I strongly believe Reddit has plans to convert Reddit Gold to an Ethereum based token in a few years time.
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