I think that they’re going to tie it to corporate sponsorship. Instead of some generic “take my energy” token, they’ll charge companies for their logo to go into a karma award, and so instead of a generic award you pay for, it’s an award that another company paid reddit for as a form of advertising (probably with some terrible logo or slogan attached to it) AND they’ll make you pay for it to give it to others. Why have something they get paid for once when they can have something they’ll get paid for twice?