After closing a $50 million funding round, Reddit could create its own cryptocurrency as a way of handing over shares in the platform to its massive user-base.
In a blog post, Reddit CEO Yishan Wong says that the "front page of the internet" has raised $50 million in a series b round led by Y Combinator president Sam Altman and joined by the likes of Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Jared Leto and Snoop Dogg.
As part of the deal, the investors have decided to give 10% of their shares back to Reddit users "in recognition of the central role the community plays in Reddit's ongoing success," says Wong.
Explaining how this might happen in a Reddit thread, Wong says: "We are thinking about creating a cryptocurrency and making it exchangeable (backed) by those shares of reddit, and then distributing the currency to the community."
The idea is "technically, legally and financially complex", is in the early stages and "could totally fail" but an ex-SEC lawyer has told Reddit that there does not appear to be anything illegal about the plan. Users have already suggested that the new currency could be called creddit.