Reddit Coins

Reddit Coins were Reddit's virtual currency used to purchase awards for posts and comments; the system was largely deprecated in 2023. Coins could be purchased directly or earned through a Reddit Premium subscription, and they were spent on awards like Gold, Silver, and Platinum that displayed alongside a post or comment.

The original system was designed as a community recognition layer that also generated revenue. A user could buy Gold for another user's post, which gave the recipient a week of Reddit Premium and signaled that the content was particularly valuable. Reddit kept the coin revenue; the recipient got the Premium time and the visible award icon on their content.

In September 2023, Reddit announced it was retiring the existing awards and coins system. The stated reason was that the team wanted to rebuild contributor monetization in a way that returned more value directly to users rather than recycling Premium time. The new system uses a smaller set of paid awards, and coin balances were converted or refunded over a transition period.

For marketers and founders, Coins were never a meaningful growth lever. Buying a Gold award for your own post was an obvious manipulation; receiving organic awards was a nice signal but didn't change ranking or distribution. The historical context matters mostly for understanding old Reddit threads, where you'll still see awards displayed on legacy content from before the deprecation.

The broader takeaway is that Reddit has experimented several times with creator monetization (coins, Contributor Program payouts, partnered ads) and the systems change. For external tools that integrate with Reddit, building features on top of any Reddit virtual-currency feature has historically been a risky bet.