Native support for cryptocurrency-based tipping is coming to Reddit, for users of the Brave browser.
That will come as a big plus to the many diehard crypto-lovin’ Redditors that spend their time crawling its forums on a daily basis. There are so many of these that the biggest crypto subreddit has a subscriber count of more than one million people (or bots)—outnumbering even the Harry Potter subreddit.
Reddit already provides some non-native support for tipping. Users are able to create “tip bots” that enable people to pay each other small amounts of some of the most well-known cryptocurrencies. However, they aren’t particularly easy to use, and it can be hard for users to see their balances and cash out.
But now, privacy-focused Brave will be introducing a button that allows users on Reddit to tip each other with the basic attention token (BAT), made popular on the Brave browser itself. The token was designed with tipping in mind, and is cheap to use even for small amounts. On the Brave browser, you can tip websites (including Decrypt) to reward them for the content they produce.
The features on Reddit will only be available to users of the Brave browser and the integration is being led by Brave developers.
The features are being developed in preview-only mode, but will be introduced in a beta version of Reddit during the next three weeks, before going live on the main website, according to a Brave developer.
The tipping function is likely to have the look and feel of the Lightning powered-tip button on Twitter, which can be enabled via Tippin.me—but with a different symbol.
For many users, Reddit is one of the paths into the crypto world, with its various subreddits each dedicated to the myriad of altcoins that are out there. The Reddit crypto communities are so strong that accusations of censorship and subreddits being co-opted are often bandied about. The site is also home to the biggest anti-crypto community, the r/Buttcoin subreddit, which mainly exists to lampoon all things crypto. But with tipping about to get push-button simple on Reddit, maybe even the Buttcoiners will find themselves lured over to the dark side.
Update [July 1, 6:54 UTC] Clarification that the tipping will only be available to Brave users, and that it was a Brave developer not a Reddit developer who made the comments.