Reddit’s r/CryptoCurrency community woke up to the news that its native token – Moons ($MOON) – registered a triple-digit price rise today, 18 July.
Analysts suggested Reddit’s recent change in terms of service as a possible reason behind this impressive price rally. According to CoinGecko, the token surged by over 105%, taking it to trade at a price level of $0.323, as of press time. The crypto is listed on exchanges like SushiSwap, Gate.io and MEXC.
Moons are an ERC-20 token on Arbitrum Nova launched by Reddit admins in May 2020 as a part of the Community Points project. Users who contribute in r/CryptoCurrency space are rewarded with these tokens which gives them a unit of ownership in the subreddit. Once earned, neither the admins nor the subreddit moderators can take them away from users.
The tokens are distributed every 28 days based on the share of the subreddit’s total ‘karma’ a user has earned during this timeframe. These tokens can be freely traded, tipped, or spent in the community for different purposes. They can also be stored in Reddit’s Ethereum-based wallet called Vault.
Another subreddit called the r/Fortnite also has a native token called the Bricks ($BRICK). Similar to $MOON, $BRICK is also distributed as a reward for contributions in the subreddit. As per CoinGecko, this token also surged massively in price, up by over 209% in the last 24 hours.
Reddit’s recent change in its rules would now explicitly allow the trading of verified virtual goods like avatars and Reddit’s community points. Unlike the previous terms where trading Points were prohibited, users can now-
“….earn, claim, purchase, sell, or give certain virtual avatars, goods, currencies, or items that can be cryptographically verified.”
Many in the community speculated this as a trigger for the two token’s massive price rally. CoinGecko’s co-founder and COO, Booby Ong, commented on the same in a tweet: “I was surprised at the sudden increase yesterday so went searching for a reason. Turns out there are some interesting changes to Reddit TOS. Web2 centralised virtual goods like Coins & Awards are going away while Web3 Community Points can now be traded.”
However, the executive also noted an important point about how “troublesome” it is to trade community points through the Reddit app. “It’s easy to send CPs to other Reddit users from the app, but to trade them, one has to export the private key from the Reddit wallet and import it into a crypto wallet. Then trade the CPs on an Arbitrum Nova DEX,” said the COO.
He also stated that it would be interesting to see Reddit roll out community points to more subreddits. In that case, it would be up to each community’s moderators to decide how best to use the tokens to govern their community.
“$MOON tokens for example can be burned to purchase advertising & AMA on the r/cryptocurrency subreddit,” suggested Ong.
