Reddit plans to sunset its current coins and awards systems used to show post appreciation by September 12, 2023; no new coins can be purchased starting now
Reddit is sunsetting its current coins and awards systems, meaning you soon won't be able to thank a kind stranger for giving you Reddit Gold for one of your posts.
Context & Ripple Effects
The awards shutdown is the latest step in Reddit's multi-year dismantling of its community ritual economy: it had already retired the annual Secret Santa gift exchange in 2021, and the Apollo-led third-party app exodus earlier that same month showed the company willing to break beloved features to restructure how value flows through the site.
What makes this one consequential is what replaced it: weeks after the September 12 cutoff, Reddit launched a Contributor Program that pays verified users monthly based on karma and gold earned — converting a symbolic tipping system into a direct payout pipeline. The arc closed further when Reddit reintroduced awards in 2024 while killing its Golden Upvotes stopgap, effectively admitting the removal overshot.
First-order effects
- Users can no longer buy coins as of the announcement, and any stockpiled coins or pending awards become worthless after September 12, 2023 — Reddit Gold gifting, one of the site's oldest gestures, disappears outright.
Second-order effects
- The vacuum pushes appreciation toward the Contributor Program's cash model, shifting Reddit's cut from selling cosmetic coins to taking a position in user-to-user payouts — and setting up the awkward 2024 walk-back when awards returned without the old coin plumbing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds alongside the later killing of blockchain-based Community Points, Reddit is consolidating all creator reward mechanisms under centrally controlled, compliance-friendly programs rather than user-owned or purely symbolic ones — a structure easier to monetize, regulate, and reverse at will.
The trend: Social platforms are replacing organic gesture economies like gifting and tipping with centralized creator-payout programs they control, price, and can unwind.