Some Redditors may be dismayed to learn that they will no longer be able to purchase Reddit Gold with Bitcoin payments. The popular link sharing and discussion board site discontinued its Bitcoin payment service in response to recent changes in the Bitcoin payment processing infrastructure.
The transactions were managed by Coinbase, who has recently announced a new arm of the business, Coinbase Commerce, that has been plagued with lacklustre reviews.
According to Reddit, this change within Coinbase, coupled with some bugs that users encountered when buying Gold with Bitcoin, has led them to drop the payment service. Reddit says that it will review whether or not to reactivate the service at a later date. The site will take
user demand for the payment service into account.
Reddit is a major space for the crypto community to discuss the crypto markets and often breaking stories will be found on Reddit before anywhere else.
Since the company opened in 2005, it has garnered millions of users. As of June 2015, the total number of accounts was around 36 million.
Reddit Gold is a token by which users can access paid content, and reward each other for insightful, humorous, or simply awesome discussion. Reddit Gold costs $4 a month, or thirty bucks a year. General membership is free, and subreddits vary in topic from pictures of owls being awesome to cryptocurrency info to educational platforms and celebrity discussions.
When Reddit teamed up with Coinbase to offer the Bitcoin payment system in 2013, they did so with the hope of reaching and including users. Removing the payment option could be viewed unfavourably by users of crypto-related subs.
/r/Darknetmarkets Banned
Another move that might upset the crypto faithful is that Reddit has banned /r/Darknetmarkets. That sub was a space where users could discuss the ability and potential to purchase things anonymously online.
According to Reddit moderators, the subreddit violates their user agreement terms surrounding the propagation of information and transactions related to illegal goods. Items that fall under that policy includes drugs, sexual services, firearms, forged documents and stolen property, among others.
As other social media giants outright ban crypto ads and offerings, Reddit’s behaviour is not surprising, and may even be indicative of a softer policy on crypto than other companies are exhibiting. For now, subs /r/cryptocurrency and /r/blockchain and /r/Bitcoin are still alive and well.
