Reddit gets $50 million in funding: 10% community stake and specialized cryptocurrency considered

Reddit has gotten a $50 million boost in funding, led by Sam Altman, president of Y combinator and participation from Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz.

Other investors include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit, Jared Leto, Jessica Livingston, Kevin and Julia Hartz, Mariam Naficy, Josh Kushner, Snoop Dogg, and Reddit's CEO Yishan Wong.

The funding will be to used to hire more staff for product development, expand the community management team, build better moderation and community tools, expand mobile offerings, improve the self-serve ad product, build out redditgifts marketplace, pay for growing technical infrastructure and other expenses incurred by "a huge and growing global internet community."

In a unique but fitting move, investors have proposed awarding 10% of the proceeds back to the community, "in recognition of the central role the community plays in reddit's ongoing success."

When members became curious as to how exactly this is going to happen, Yishan dropped a bomb: they are thinking of creating a specialized cryptocurrency, exchangeable for shares of reddit. One can imagine the formidable logistics of such a venture, as Yishan continued:

"Nothing like this has ever been done before. Basically we have to nail down how to do each step correctly (it is technically, legally, and financially complex), though in our brief consultation with an ex-SEC lawyer, he stated he could find nothing illegal about this plan. Nevertheless, there are something like 30 different things we have to pull off to make this work, so we're going to try."

It will also be interesting to see how the advent of such a currency- if/when it materializes- would affect plans to build a dedicated tool accepting Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term Payments Payments One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl Read this Term for advertising. The advent of a specialized currency may obviate bitcoin's necessity, although this can be debated.