Reddit is a unique platform, a mixture of a social network, a forum, and media. The word Reddit alludes to the English phrase “read it.” In 2022, it’s currently the most visited site in the world, with approximately 1.7 billion visits per month and more than 500 million users.
Unlike usual social networks, Reddit is divided into communities of interest, also called subreddits. The rules for each community are determined by its creators, moderators, or the most active members. In this sense, the platform allows you to create from the most democratic to the most authoritarian communities.
On Reddit, you can find like-minded people for any topic. During the cryptocurrency boom in 2017-18, crypto-related subreddits began to grow rapidly. Communities emerged that raised the value of BTC and pumped up projects like in the GameStop story. Social network developers are also showing interest in the cryptocurrency industry. Over the past few years, Reddit has featured paid NFT avatars, subreddit’s cryptocurrencies, and an NFT marketplace.
Everyone to the Moon: Cryptocurrencies and Dogecoin
Reddit’s cryptocurrency-themed communities are pretty big. For example, the largest subreddit is /r/CryptoCurrency, which has 5.8 million participants. The /r/bitcoin community takes second place with 4.7 million users at the time of writing. Finally, the subreddit dedicated to the notorious meme coin is /r/dogecoin, which has almost 2.5 million members.
To assess the scale of influence of such an audience, you can take, for example, the appeal of the /r/bitcoin subreddit participant. A user under the nickname u/thadiusb calculated that if every community member, (at that time there were about 3.3 million of them,) would buy $30 worth of BTC, the investment would amount to $99.3 million. He suggested supporting the adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador on September 7, 2021, in this way. As a result, the value of the first cryptocurrency rose by $2,000 at that time. Whether this was triggered by a post on Reddit, after which users began buying up the currency, or whether El Salvador’s adoption of BTC as official tender in the country was the trigger, remains a mystery.
Another interesting subreddit event occurred with the well-known Dogecoin. DOGE is a cryptocurrency that functions on its own blockchain network, with a Litecoin clone initially used as its base. The cryptocurrency was created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who met on Reddit and haven’t even met each other offline. They decided to combine two of the most popular Reddit requests at the time — the “Doge” meme and “Bitcoin” — for the sake of humor, they created Dogecoin, the first meme coin.
Dogecoin caught audiences’ attention in 2021. Communities on Reddit, including r/CryptoCurrency and r/SatoshiStreetBets, began buying up DOGE, reminiscent of the challenge to the major exchange players in the GameStop situation. The community decided to test what it was capable of. At the same time, a viral video on TikTok called to raise the cryptocurrency to $1 by investing just $25. Moreover, in 2021 Elon Musk poured oil on the flames by sharing supportive messages about Dogecoin on Twitter. As a result, the value of DOGE increased by 74,000%. At the end of 2020, the coin was trading around $0.001, and it peaked at $0.74 by mid-2021.
The communities on Reddit are what make the project stand out. Being able to get into a community of people with common interests makes the platform unique, while an engaged audience is a “key asset” in today’s online space.
DONUTS, MOONS & BRICKS
Over the past several years, the developers of Reddit have been exploring the possibility of incorporating blockchain technology into the site’s work. One area was the expansion of Reddit Community Points program functions. Community points measure the reputation of subreddit participants: the more points, the more significant the contribution a user has made to the development of this community in the form of quality content.
In December 2019, the DONUT token appeared on the Reddit platform for the first time. It was issued on the Ethereum blockchain, and a group of anonymous community developers /r/ethtrader was responsible for its development. A total of 120 million DONUT tokens were issued. Tokens are distributed to users each month according to the karma earned, however, the exact distribution formula is not presented in the DONUT dashboard. Instead, a separate ecosystem has formed around the token; they can be used to pay for membership in closed communities on Reddit, sent to staking, traded on decentralized exchanges (DEX), and large DONUT owners can participate in the management of subreddit /r/ethtrader.
After the successful launch of the first token, another larger cryptocurrency community, /r/CryptoCurrency, issued a MOON token in May 2020. A total of 25 million MOONs were issued on the Ethereum blockchain. One part of the tokens was distributed among the moderators of the /r/CryptoCurrency subreddit to reward participants. Reddit developers own the other part. Every subreddit participant can earn MOON by creating engaging and valuable content and getting karma for it, which is exchanged for a token. The exchange rate of MOON to karma is 1.2 to 1. For example 100 karma * 1.2 = 120 MOON. You must have a Reddit Vault wallet to receive tokens. You can use them as payment for entering closed communities. Exchanging tokens for fiat is possible on the decentralized exchange HoneySwap. MOON has a value of $0.11 as of November 22, 2022.
Another well-known token on Reddit, BRICK, was also released on the Ethereum network. It was created for the subreddit r/FortNiteBR. This gaming community allows information related solely to the game Fortnite to be shared. A total of 50 million BRICKs have been issued. You can earn and use the tokens in the same way as MOON or DONUT. However, the formula for their distribution is still being finalized and is not completely clear. The value of BRICK at the time of writing this article was $0.008, and tokens are traded on DEX HoneySwap.
NFT: Keeping Up with Trends
In June 2021, Reddit released its first NFT collection, CryptoSnoos, composed of four NFTs. The tokens were worth between 70 ETH and 175 ETH as of November 20, 2022. The developers decided not to stop there and to create more NFT products, for which there is already a demand and customers.
In July 2022, the social network introduced 40,000 paid NFT avatars. The non-fungible tokens were released on the Polygon blockchain as a result of Reddit’s collaboration with dozens of artists. The avatars ranged in value from $9.99 to $99.99 at the opening auction. More than 2.5 million platform users created a Reddit Vault wallet to buy these NFTs; at the time, half as many accounts were registered on OpenSea.
There was a lot of excitement around Reddit’s CollectibleAvatars collection within days, and the average price at which tokens were traded was around $300. It is possible to buy avatars for fiat with a credit card, plus having cryptocurrency is not necessary, which definitely made Reddit NFT more attractive to users. Tokens can also be transferred to other wallets and sold on various NFT marketplaces.
According to Reddit, the driving idea for the collection is to help independent artists develop art in the Web3 space. Artists involved in the creation of CollectibleAvatars receive a commission from each transaction and the primary function of these NFTs is the ability to set the purchased token as a profile avatar. Owners of such avatars can add animations and accessories to their profiles. In addition, only NFT owners can join the closed subreddit r/CollectibleAvatars, where members share educational information about non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency wallets, and more.
The Reddit network plans to expand cryptocurrency issuance opportunities for communities and continue to work with artists to create new NFT collections with avatars. Platform developers are testing the creation of separate tokenomics both on the platform as a whole and in individual subreddits. To summarize, the cryptocurrency community on Reddit is growing, platform representatives are eager to encourage and support users’ blockchain initiatives and actively implement such innovations themselves.
